Action Girl
by Colour Coded Chaos
Summary: Dentists aren't always just dentists. What if Hermione had been raised by martial-arts experts? Hermione-centric darkly comic AU. Please read and review, it makes me feel loved. Now with added OH GODS WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?
1. Growing Up

Hermione Granger woke with a start on the morning of her eleventh birthday, something that may have been caused by the cricket ball arcing towards her head. Instinctively, she snapped her head around and caught it in a small, slightly chubby hand with skin hardened by good, solid work.

"Well done, young padawan. Strong with you the Force is, mmmmm."

She laughed and threw the cricket ball back at her father hard. Ioan Granger had trained as a dentist during his university years before the promise of inner peace (and, Hermione understood, something to do with pretty Asian ladies that she'd understand about when she was older) had lured him into learning a breathtaking array of martial arts. Now one of the most respected practitioners of t'ai chi and Shotokai karate in Western Europe, he had started a family with his college sweetheart and raised their daughter in the traditions of his arts.

It was apparent from the first time she'd seen her father practice kata that the little girl with the mushroom cloud of mid-brown curls was in love with it. The fascination held for substantially longer than her usual ones did – it outlasted even ponies, to the silent joy of her decidedly urban parents – with one exception.

Magic.

That fascination had begun when, after a little hellion called Charity Barlow-Sykes had tormented her for a solid year, she had let forth a burst of gold-coloured sparks from her outstretched arm and teleported the girl onto the staffroom photocopier with gilded letters flying through the air reading a selection of extremely unladylike and unrepeatable oaths. It had grown steadily stronger with each incident – setting fire to her great-aunt's hair during a frightful family wedding, scaring the owner of an inner-city stable yard half to death with a display of brightly coloured sparks and shimmering intelligence, all sorts of madcap semi-adventures that would pass the time of any midlife-crisis-suffering schoolteacher in a Scottish greasy spoon. Specialness, her mother said, was an end in and of itself – it was worth all the jibes of the less fortunate to feel the pride of the people who knew better. Hermione was naturally bookish, and was said to have only three states of being; practicing her skills, reading, or near-dead from exhaustion from the combination of the two. More than once had the Grangers had to talk to her severely about how sleep was a good thing and the book/kata/interesting red sparkly thing she'd made appear would still be there when she woke up the next morning. Usually by that point it was, technically, already the next morning, so Hermione was usually able to browbeat them into at least another chapter.

But that was all in the past now; she was a whole eleven years old, officially a Big Girl, like Vivienne Stafford who chewed bubblegum and had a pet dog that lived in a handbag and mysterious black stuff around her eyes she said was called eyeliner but looked to adults like something else entirely and everything. Soon she'd be off to Big School – real big school, not like St Joseph The Unspeakably Violent's Primary School – and she'd have bubblegum of her own. And possibly the book on logic from that nice Mister Eli who was from America and was so fascinating. Either one would do, really, she thought to herself, although daring to hope for both might be pushing it.

Her parents never underestimated their child's ability to read, and the kitchen table's black Formica top creaked slightly under the weight of a leviathan accumulation of books. New teen author works, new fantasy, something about glittery vampires from her mum that Hermione hadn't had the heart to tell her she'd already read and found totally devoid of wit, charm or sophistication, practical spellwork for beginners, herbology, Essential Transfiguration by Arniphas Gallstone –

Wait, wait, back up a minute.

"Mum, Dad, this is... quite strange. You've got me all these books about magic... I do know it's not real. Same with unicorns and fairy tales and hedgehogs." An odd incident involving an impressionable five-year-old, the National Geographic channel's Adorable Woodland Life season and a dinner party anecdote Cora Granger would wheel out for years.

"So magic isn't real, then? Well, damn... that means Professor McGonagall's out of a job."

Hermione's right shoulder twitched slightly. "Professor McGonagall is... who exactly?"

"That," said a small tabby cat coming through the flap, "would be me." And then she folded up and out of herself into the shape of an imperious-looking elderly lady. Woman, Hermione thought, simply did not cut it. She had a tight silver bun rammed into place by a tall, wide-brimmed pointy hat, dark robes with a little splash of red trim, and a gaze that could bore into your soul if you were standing behind six feet of earthworks and had led a completely blameless life. The girl, who had heard about anatomy, did the only thing she thought appropriate at the time.

"Well, a simple Enervation Charm should bring her around in a minute," said Professor McGonagall after a few awkward moments of dead silence. "And to think, you thought I was one of those people... Muggle thing, what was it again?"

"A Jehovah's Witness?" Cora proffered.

"Indeed. Hermione Granger is a witch."


	2. The Mentor

Hermione blearily opened her eyes and looked up at her parents. "That... thing with the witch... that did happen, didn't it? That wasn't just because I was excited or something..."

"I should say not," said Professor McGonagall in as kind a manner as she could. It still made the little girl leap into the air like she'd just been hit by a stingray. As she landed, instinct took over, and she dropped into a low stance and faced the Professor, eyes hard and completely focussed on her. The concentration, as was the mix of rage and terror, was evident on her face. That was when another of Hermione's Little Moments happened.

She began breathing in the sanshin way her father had taught her, and shut her eyes, and punched the air with what she now realised was an oddly-tingling blue-hued fist. The resultant ripple in the air smashed several drawers and blew all three adults several feet back. The magic left her gasping for air and flat on her back.

"I think we definitely need to buy Hermione a wand post-haste," said McGonagall, dusting herself off and removing some orange juice stains with a muttered Tergeo. The girl in question sat up again. This, she thought to herself, was becoming something of a bad habit. "I shall take her to Ollivander's. I trust fiscal arrangements can be made for textbooks and the like? You appear to have already bought the syllabus for first, second and indeed third year..."

"She loves to learn," said Cora weakly. Ioan shook some dust out of his hair and straightened.

"Professor, I must ask – what are the fees going to be like? We can and will pay whatever you ask of us, we can make do-"

"Sir, Hogwarts has entirely different means of funding. We do not charge; we simply teach and keep our young witches and wizards like Hermione here as happy and safe as we can."

Well that little lot's straight out of the brochure, thought Ioan to himself, filing the witch's words under Really Quite Suspicious. "No fees for Hogwarts? And yet... it's a castle? Can you magic bankers as well or something? Do a little mind control on the gnomes of Zurich?" His voice was like marble – hard, and shot through with veins of deep black sarcasm.

"Muggles let gnomes run banks? Gracious, what are you all coming to..." Of course, Minerva McGonagall was well up to the task of dealing with back-talk from an angry parent. They usually happened when the Board had been forced to let go another Defence teacher for incompetence, or being caught with a selection of students in a broom cupboard, or inappropriate use of a yeti in a school environment (they were NOT having Professor Tenzing back again). "I think a quick solution to the argument would be for me to take Hermione to Diagon Alley, help her choose a wand, and then be off to Hogwarts-"

"Erm, I'm sorry, Professor, but as the Hermione in question surely I should get a say in the matter?"

The professor turned round. "Do you have reservations, my dear? Hogwarts is a lovely place, you know."

"I don't doubt that for a second, Professor, but... am I right in thinking it is a boarding school?"

"Why, yes!"

"Then I do not wish to go."

McGonagall goggled, an unusual expression and one quite hard to say when slightly drunk. "You... do not want to go to Hogwarts?"

"Not if it's a boarding school. I have been learning Shotokai karate and Yang-style t'ai chi chuan for seven years, and I will not give them up to cast spells with a glorified sparkler. Things like are very important to me."

"I see... Well then. I think I know a way around this." McGonagall jabbed her wand through the air and spoke. "Expecto Patronum." Silver mist issued from her wand and coalesced into a gerfalcon. "Ask Professor Dumbledore if Madam Pomfrey still requires an assistant." It cawed and burst off into the sky. Moments later, it returned in the form of a different sort of bird, one with wings that looked like they were on fire.

"Yes indeed, Minerva," it said in a voice like a warm bath, "And I must say Mister Granger would be most admirably suited to the task."

"WHAT? You're dragging me along as well? Away from my wife? And in any case, what the hell sort of job is it? You people don't need dental care..."

"Not necessarily. You all know the stereotypical Muggle image of the toothless old witch?"

"Yes?"

"It started for a reason, you know. Besides, Madam Pomfrey is a very talented and open-minded Healer, and would appreciate input from a distinguished source-"

"Distinguished sources," said Cora. "I'm coming too. It'll be such an adventure!"

I hope not too much of one, thought McGonagall. For all our sakes.

"Well then, that's settled. I won't leave my wife, my wife is set on going, my daughter's demolished the kitchen with a little bit of magic – how we're going to explain to Uncle Utz the absence of that horrible porcelain harlequin thing he gave us for Christmas last year I do not know – so the Grangers are off to Hogwarts."

"Indeed. I hope you don't have too much contact with your daughter-"

"Why on Earth would you say that," asked Cora.

"You'll be working in the Infirmary, should you go. It would not do to see too much of anyone in there."

"Fair enough. Professor, we'll need to pack Hermione's and our stuff. We've still got some Galleons left over from the shopping trip a few days ago – why don't you take those and get her a wand. I'm hopeless at DIY, you see..."

"Are we gonna take a broomstick ride, Professor?"

"No, my girl, we're going to Apparate."

"Which is..."

The teacher grabbed Hermione's hand and the world... lurched. And they were in Diagon Alley.

"Does it always feel like that?"

"Not after a few tries."

"We should do it more, then. Although I'd prefer to wait until after I find a conveniently located gutter. Oh, look, there's one!"

One scene from The Exorcist and a few questioning glances later, Hermione stood up. "Shall we visit Ollivander's now?"


	3. Time To Unlock Your True Potential

The bell on Ollivander's door tinkled and in walked Minerva McGonagall with a little girl in tow, though of course if you actually called her that she'd attempt to rip off your kneecaps and make you eat them. Metaphorically, at least. Hermione Granger was a Big Girl and didn't care who knew it. And Ollivander was everything she'd expected him to be.

A kindly looking elderly man with an unkempt beard and a spray of fine white hair fizzing out from under his small pointy hat, the wand seller was pleased to have "such a big girl in his little shop." He was a quick learner, having seen an exchange with a less diplomatic little old man outside his window that had left his face inches away from something unpleasant that had come from one of the pet shop's more nervous Crups. Hermione beamed at him and got out a sheet of paper with some pink stickers on it.

"Oh dear," he mumbled, "one of that sort."

"Right then, Miss..."

"Hermione Granger."

"Miss Granger, let's have a look for a wand for you." He sized her up. She looked... tense. No, coiled was a better word, and taught an even better one. Her whole body fair sang with the suppressed power within herself, and it wasn't all magical. Something springy, a softer wood, but not too soft, her hands looked very strong for a girl her age. It needed to respond to the power evidently locked inside her and straining at the seams...

"Try this. Cypress and dragon heartstring, nine inches, rather springy-"

"Why isn't there a star on the end?" Hermione asked sweetly.

Ollivander was stunned for a moment. "Er... why would you put it there?"

"To make it pretty, obviously! It has to be pretty, otherwise what's the point?"

This girl, he thought, was either one of the most sarcastic or one of the most naive kids he'd ever had in his shop. "Um... I'm very sorry, Miss Granger, we've never had much in the way of, of demand for wands with," the craftsman winced and shuddered visibly, "a big star on the end. Try that one anyway; the wand chooses the witch, you know!" Ollivander's smile was brittle as he ran off into the recesses of his shop.

Hermione's interest was piqued. She stroked the wand gently and was surprised at how soft the wood felt. It was almost as though it had been cushioned. She gripped the thicker end tight and struck what she hoped was a suitable pose, the swished a line through the air shouting "ALAKAZAM!"

Professor McGonagall barely got out of the way in time.

A jet of searing force whipped across the room, scythed through several crates and much of the brickwork. Across the street, one of the Crups panicked again, and the owner of the shop knew it was going to be a long day today.

McGonagall got unsteadily to her feet and slipped her own wand into her hand. No-one wanted to get hurt, and a wandless Shield Charm definitely wouldn't have the power to stop one of this girl's flourishes. Better safe than sorry. Hermione had the decency to look sheepish.

Ollivander was used to hearing explosions from the front room and swore inventively and at great length under his breath. After he'd ascertained the integrity of the water main and that nothing actually valuable was broken, he spun towards one of the rear shelves. Needs to be pretty, eh, girl, he thought. See how you like this, then. He grabbed a sheaf of boxes and stalked back out, wearing the same broad, bland smile concealing an interior nasty grin.

He opened one in front of the girl. "Perhaps not this one, then. Now, how about this? Cork and phoenix feather, nine and a quarter inches, firmer than the other one." McGonagall steeled herself to cast the shield charm. Hermione adopted the same slightly Errol Flynn-like pose and yelped "Bibbity Bobbity Boo!"

"PROTEGO!"

Even that didn't stop the fist of air smashing through another shelf, though the Professor hadn't been knocked through the air this time. Ollivander almost snatched the wand out of the stunned girl's hand and hid the box.

"No, no, no... too insane, we need you to be colder... ah, this might work..."

He produced a wand and handed it to Hermione. "Coromandel and unicorn tail core. Ten and three quarter inches, firm but still with that little bit of flex to it you'll need, and I hope you'll find it pretty too." And it was, oh, how it was. The wand's wood was made up of tiger-like stripes, burnished to an incredible sheen. It was so smooth and lithe that as soon as Hermione picked it up, she felt more settled and sure of herself. Ollivander clapped his hands together. "We've found it! We've found your wand, Hermione! And I've still got a shop left! Happy DAY!"

As Hermione sat in the corner with her new wand and an emergency Vonnegut, a shaken-looking Minerva McGonagall thumped the nine Galleons onto the counter. As he handed over a receipt and three Knuts in change, he spoke.

"Condition of sale, Professor.

"Do not, under any circumstance, let her put one of those frightful Hello Kitty stickers on her wand."

The teacher simply nodded, and went to buy Hermione's school uniform. It would be safer.

Probably.


	4. Here Comes A New Challenger

In Madame Malkin's fitting room, Hermione Granger was being fussed over by a team of staff. The three shop assistants – one of whom, Hermione had noticed, was chewing furiously on some gum – were taking all sorts of bodily measurements; Hogwarts robes had to hide all of them, at least until the third year, so it was important that anything potentially distracting got lost under the tidal wave of miscellaneous black fabric. Hermione suffered it all gladly until one of the more disinterested of Madam's shop workers forgot about a delicately positioned pin.

"Who," she said in a tone that boiled with rage, "stuck that in my ar-"

"Miss Granger, how are you getting on?"

"Could be worse," said Hermione in her best non-committal voice. "I mean, that pin could have gone in my eye or something..."

McGonagall cast a steely eye over the assistants. All of them quailed. "Well, I see you are very nearly done here. We should leave for Gringotts, to bank the remainder of our money in your personal account."

"I... have a personal account? Does it have money in it? My dad gives me money occasionally, when I've worked hard. Most of it goes on chocolate-"

"Evidently," spoke a reedy, smarmy voice from the corner. Hermione spun and the shadows slowly merged into the shape of a girl, about her age but bigger. That's good, she thought, bigger means slower and overconfident. "It is equally evident that none of your father's money goes on haircare... skincare... anything to make you look less like a beaver with a perm, really."

That did it. Ioan despaired of her daughter's rather quick temper; it often meant he was dragged away to visit a frightful primary school teacher called Viridian Blenkinsop and get called a lousy parent for letting his daughter stand up to bullies. Sometimes Cora was called instead, which made things very interesting occasionally.

"Madam Malkin," she asked, "I'm very new to the wizarding world. Is it fashionable for young witches here like the one over there to dress like a bricklayer in a tent?"

The shop owner smirked. Professor McGonagall attempted to hustle the girl out of the shop.

"So you're a Mudblood, then? How... explanatory. Your filth shouldn't even be allowed to attend, let alone talk back to your betters."

Rage curled off Hermione in fumes and her teeth started to buzz. "Is that so? What is your name?"

"Pansy Parkinson, although you should be calling me Madam, gutter-born wretch that you are."

Hermione pulled out a book: Wizarding Genealogy for Beginners. "Parkinson, Parkinson... yes, they're mentioned here. A family that has been, ahem, utterly inconsequential for the past century. No money, no hall to speak of, no seat on the Wizengamot for the past seventy-four years since one of your great-grandparents' amusing little peccadilloes... oh my goodness... tell me, does Parkinson biology enable its daughters to come from sheep?" Her voice was sickly sweet over a current of anger that felt like it would burn the roof off her mouth. "That is absolutely ENOUGH, Miss Granger-" McGonagall started, but Pansy cut her off.

"You filthy little rat turd, I'll get you for that!" Parkinson strode forward, rolling up her sleeves to give the Mudblood the slap she obviously needed.

_Favours the right hand side of her body. Will attempt to slap me with a haymaker. Step back, link arms when she strikes. Humiliate her. Three reels then a heel trip and throw. Let the grip slide up to her wrist then brake hard. Place foot on elbow. Make her scream. Win. Is this what Sherlock Holmes feels like?_

Pansy whirled her arm around, slashing her right hand towards a face that had been in reach a moment ago... wait, what? The Muggleborn had dodged it, and now... what the hell was this?

Hermione grinned draconically. "Swing your pardner, do-see-do!" She said in a truly abysmal cowboy accent. Then she spun, dragging Pansy behind her as a shocked Minerva McGonagall just stood and watched. Hermione dragged the girl in a few circles using her own momentum, then smacked her leg into Pansy's and threw her over her shoulder and down to the floor, the thick carpet meaning nothing was broken. Hermione's trainer-clad foot pressed gently on her adversary's elbow joint and she grinned.

"This IS how Sherlock Holmes feels! Dad was right!" Hermione pressed down a little more and Pansy yelped in pain. "Don't use that word again, Pansy. Not to me or to anyone else. If you do, I'll come for you, and show everyone just how much you live up to your name-" She was thrown backwards with a bolt of red light, and crashed into a mannequin a few feet away. Aramanth Parkinson, wand still out, ran to her daughter's side.

"How could you let that little barbarian into your school? You saw what she did to my Pansy!"

"Yes, Mrs Parkinson, I did, and rest assured that once Miss Granger wakes up from the faintly lacklustre Stunning Jinx inflicted on her by a fully-grown witch, the incident and any subsequent ones will be dealt with by me personally. At Hogwarts. Where children are supposed to be safe. Good day."

She swept away towards the still-prone Hermione and bent over her, Madam Malkin rushing from behind the counter. "Minerva, why didn't you do anything," she hissed. "I have a reputation to uphold!"

"Because I know the Parkinsons. If Hermione had sat there and taken what Pansy had dished out to her, it would have gone on throughout her time at Hogwarts. I don't like the thought of my students fighting either, Madam, but I like the thought of my students being bullied even less. Thankfully, we've got everything we need." She helped the strung-out little girl to her feet and muttered Ennervate. Hermione gasped for breath.

"Should've known, should've known better, Dad's going to kill me..."

"Hermione, what you did was very foolish." The girl looked close to tears. "But it was also very brave. Now come, let us depart. You need to rest, and discuss this with your parents." They walked out of the shop, recipients of dirty looks from the Parkinsons and silent wishes of encouragement from everyone who had had to cope with said family at Hogwarts.

**AN: **Thank you to everyone who's reviewed. I really appreciate it. Love you guys and girls.


	5. Break The Cutie

"Your first day."

"I know, Dad, I'm-"

"Sorry, Hermione, I'm just trying to wrap my head around this. You have been one day, _one single day_, in the wizarding world, and this has happened? God above... I hate to imagine what you'll do to some poor sap when you actually know a bit of magic!"

"But, but I know it was wrong-"

"But. You. _Did it_. And knowing it was wrong after you've done something is not a valid excuse. Don't you have _any_ self-control?"

"I didn't _say _it was an excuse," she wailed, "I just... it's j-just..."And she broke down. Well, she reasoned, I've already lost all self-control, according to Dad. A little more won't hurt.

Ioan scooped his daughter up and held her tight as she sobbed into his shoulder. "It's alright, Hermione. I forgive you." His voice was soft and he spoke in Welsh for a few minutes, to calm her down. It wasn't the words he said – Hermione couldn't actually speak it – it was simply the songlike nature of the language. Slowly, her sobs subsided, and she pulled back.

"I'm s-sorry, Dad..."

"It's OK, dear heart. There's a surprise waiting for you upstairs in the video player. I think it'll cheer you up."

Hermione's face brightened like a supernova as the penny dropped, and when she ran up the stairs there was a small sonic boom. Ioan watched her run. "Isn't just impossible to stay angry at her?" he said, as she banged on the subbed season of Bubblegum Crisis and squeed.

"Mister Granger, I am a Hogwarts Professor. We can stay angry at _anyone_. But... it may be more difficult to do so with young Hermione there."

Ioan nodded, and his pager went off. "Damn, I've got an appointment. Cora? Which car should I take? I've got an appointment!"

"Neither," yelled a voice from upstairs competing with Hermione's anime, "you'll have to take the bus. Hermione, would you come and give me a hand with this?"

"Oh, come on, Cora, she's had a bit of a rough day today, let her watch a video in peace-"

"Hang on, is that... is that Bubblegum Crisis? The subbed season?"

"Yes, dear. I got it for her-"

"Takewhichevercaryouwantthere'sanime!" Cora was something of a nerd in that regard and had gotten her entire family into Japanese animation. McGonagall shrugged. Muggles.

As Ioan roared off in their Volvo – an 850R that one of his mates had tuned up to cause even more block-arsed road carnage than normal – the Professor Apparated into the bar of the Leaky Cauldron. "Tom, drink, now. Kids. Muggles. Something called anime. Broken sentences. Make it a double." The barman wordlessly obeyed.

An announcement came over the Wizarding Wireless in the corner, cutting through a rerun of a bizarre Muggle panel game. "We interrupt your broadcast to deliver this message. Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived who has been missing for several months, has been found. Hogwarts gamekeeper Rubeus Hagrid, who found the young wizard, had this to say."

Coverage cut to a man who didn't sound merely big, but huge, the basso profundo of a rockslide. "Oi... Oi don't like ter say 'ow Oi found 'Arry. 'E'd not been fed fer weeks, yer could see that jus' lookin' at him. Covered in bruises, 'e wuz, an' cuts, an' they'd..." The huge man seemed like he was crying. "They'd broke 'is wand arm. They must 'ave. He's right-'anded, an' 'e couldn't... 'e couldn' even move it..."

They cut back to what was evidently a studio. "An emergency Healer team despatched the Boy Who Lived to St Mungos, where Healer Jonathan de Valois described his condition as critical but largely stable, adding that it was the worst case of child abuse he had seen in forty-eight years as a paediatric Healer. Stories that the couple who did this after him, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, should be hunted down and tortured to a slow and painful death over the course of several years by everyone who lost someone they knew during the war or knows someone who did remain unconfirmed. Argent Walberswick, extremely angry, BBC Wizarding News. We now return you to our scheduled broadcast."

The packed pub was completely silent for a few more seconds. Then one of the patrons, an iron-hard old lady in a truly awful hat, let loose a howl of rage and made for the door, with everyone save Minerva McGonagall running behind her, baying for blood. The professor just slumped forward and put her head in her hands. Tom leaned over her and patted her shoulder gently. "He'll be fine. He's got that de Valois bloke looking after him, and that man saved my nephew after he got blasted with a mix of curses when his brothers were practicing their duelling. Harry Potter is in the best hands we've got."

"I know, Tom... it's... Merlin, it feels like it was my fault. Just leave the bottle, right there. Thank you." She looked at the tumbler of whiskey on the table, then at the bottle, and filled the former with the latter. "It isn't fair. He should have been _safe_."

"Well, he is now, Minerva. He is now."

And while this was happening today, McGonagall thought, I was worrying about how to deal with girls thumping each other. How stupid must I be?

"Not stupid at all, Minerva," said Albus Dumbledore, beard matted and unkempt. "I am the only one at fault here, aside from the people who did this. Had I but foreseen..."

There were worse things out there than simply standing up for yourself, she thought, and pulled out a book to read.

**AN: **Drama! I'm sorry about how depressing this chapter is, but it is an alternate universe. Hermione's not going to get edged out, that I can and will assure you; indeed, it becomes a plot point later on. No fear of that happening... she'd lamp you one.


	6. My First Friend

On the morning of 1st September, 1991, a young woman made her first steps into a new world. It was at this point that she trod on a carelessly-abandoned bouncy ball, skidded a few yards backwards, and only just managed to catch the arcing cricket ball aimed at her head. Dad's throwing harder now; either he has more confidence in my abilities, she thought to herself, or he plain doesn't like me. The young girl mulled it over and then shrugged it off as inconsequential, and she made her way downstairs for a hearty bacon-pancake breakfast.

Cora had gone ahead with Professor McGonagall, who seemed oddly subdued the past few days, to sort out her and Ioan's accommodation. They couldn't sleep in the student quarters, Poppy Pomfrey had a snore like a Napoleonic-era naval battle, Hagrid had taken the hut in the grounds and if they tried to find an empty room in a corridor, they might not be coming back from it. In the end, they had found a rental flat in Hogsmeade and the vast majority of their stuff was already there. It was now Ioan's turn to make the journey up by car – even his 850 couldn't have made it from London to Edinburgh in under eight hours, but he refused to not see his only child off.

Hermione wasn't exactly good conversation for the car journey, since there was a book present. The size of the tome in question, Hogwarts: A History, meant she would be happily ensconced in it for – Ioan took a note of her page number and scribbled some figures at the next set of roadworks – about half an hour. He was correct, and she actually started talking.

"Dad, the school sounds so fascinating! There are talking portraits and ghosts and moving staircases and dungeons and everything! And even though they weren't supposed to, back in the twelfth century-"

Ioan could see where she was going with this, and the traffic around London was getting steadily more ridiculous. "Hermione, your mother and I will have ample opportunity to find this out, as will you. The book is doubtless fascinating and you are probably going over it in your head right now." Hermione nodded. "Keep the book in there, and I will buy you ice cream."

The little girl sank smugly into her seat and learnt some new words from her father about the intricacies of London driving. Ice cream get. Mission accomplished. Is it even _possible _to fit an entire Mercedes there?

At King's Cross, after two hours and an extremely large Ferrero Rocher ice cream from a specialist on Swallow Road, Hermione's trunks were unloaded onto a trolley. She ran off, her father trailing behind, and couldn't find where to go next. A stout-looking woman with flaming-red hair no stylist would ever risk on an innocent customer tottered over in sensible shoes.

"Looking for the barrier, dear? Don't worry, we'll see you right. Is that your father coming with your bags?" Ioan had a hard job keeping up with the unencumbered Hermione, who was something of a runner anyway. His shirt was covered in sweat and his slightly thin grubby-blonde hair was plastered so severely to his scalp it looked painted on.

"Hermione, where on Earth are you supposed to go- oh, hello, didn't see you there."

The woman stuck out a hand. "Molly Weasley. I've got six boys; your Hermione's in pretty safe hands. It's my Ron's first time up here too."

"Ioan Granger. Me and my wife have just started work at Hogwarts ourselves, seconded to Madam Pomfrey at the Infirmary. Forgive me, I hope not to see your boys that much."

There was a loud bang in the distance, and a cloud of green smoke hovered over some children in the middle distance. "That's unlikely, given my twins. STOP IT, you two. Leave Ginny alone, she's you only sister."

"That's why it's fun, Mum," bellowed a pair of voices across the platform. Molly rolled her eyes.

Ioan kneeled down and pressed something into Hermione's hand. It was a little cylinder, about four inches long and maybe half an inch wide, made apparently of bronze. "This was your great-grandad's, Hermione. He made it during a war, to show how meaningless wars are, and he got a medal for surviving it. Keep it close, and keep it safe, and if you ever need to then press the button on the side. And I _will_ see you again."

Hermione fought back a sniffle and looked her father in the eye. "I will study hard and bring pride to our clan, sensei!" Ioan grinned and hugged her tight.

"Love you. Now, off you go with Mrs. Weasley. You've a train to catch."

And with that, Hermione became a Hogwarts student proper. Left on a platform with someone she didn't know from Adam – or rather, from Eve – and with nought to distinguish her from her peers except her own merits. She helped Mrs. Weasley to drag her books onto the platform, and then onto the train. A small, skinny boy with the same weapons-grade hue to his hair and a maroon jumper and knackered-looking trousers lugged some of the suitcases onto the pain, grimacing with the effort. "Hi, I'm Ron," he said, with a slightly forced and wonky grin that suggested it'd be nice to talk to him for a while.

"Hermione Granger," she said, "and thanks for the help. Um..." She tried to think of a good topic for conversation as a porter loaded and labelled her bags. "Shall we sit together? I'm not a great talker, so let's hear about you, eh?" They found an empty compartment and Hermione listened to the boy prattle on about whatever took his mind. He was sweet, and good for a laugh, and good for a tease whenever he tried to talk about Muggle technology. His father apparently had a pinball machine in his back garden that he'd tried to restore; Hermione responded with the number of one of her parent's friends, Geoff. They sat and talked, and the conversation was threatening to drift onto darker things when the food trolley arrived.

"You eat... chocolate frogs."

"Yeah. Chuck us any cards you get, they're trading card games."

"Chocolate. Frogs."

"... Is there a problem? Are you allergic, or something, because I'll have yours-"

"No, I'm not, it's just... there's so much I have to learn. Recommend me any books, Ron?"

"Eh? Sorry, I don't really read much. I have fun instead."

Hermione snorted. "But reading is fun! I mean, look, say you've got... an evil wizard, right? And there's only one boy in the entire world, a chosen one, who can stop him. And the boy goes off on all these fantastical adventures-"

"Except he didn't."

"What? Ron, it was an example, that doesn't mean it actually happened, does it?"

"You're Muggle-born, right? Look up Harry Potter in one of your books. Then remember that he didn't have any adventures; just got beaten up by people who were supposed to look after him." The boy looked furious, and Hermione flipped through Famous Witches and Wizards.

"... Oh. Ron, I didn't know-"

"You can't know everything, Hermione, not on your first day. Have another pumpkin pasty, you'll be good as new after that."

She did, and they talked for the rest of the journey.


	7. BONUS LONG: Well Sorted, Innit

"The train now standing at Platform 4 is the 8:32 for Hogwarts South. We apologise for the delays due to the wrong kind of snow on the line."

"Hermione, why did you pinch your nose when you said that?"

"Muggle train thing. Thank God we're not on National Express..."

"I am resigned to never understanding you." It was a phrase Ron had often heard his mum say when Dad had brought home a particularly interesting circuit-breaker or something. There had been the Milky Milky Obsession, too... that had ended badly. Stickily.

"'Allo, furs' years! Oi'm 'Agrid, an' Oi'll be showin' yer arranhd. Come on, now, yer bags'll be taken ter yer rooms and yer don't want ter get lost. If yer do, foller the sound o' moi gratuitous regional accent."

"Why did he say that?"

"Wizard thing. Besides, Hagrid's a bit..." Ron put a finger to the side of his head and spun it in a little circle.

"Mental?"

"Yeah. Bike crash about ten years ago and he's not been right since, Bill says."

They trolled off behind the leviathan groundsman towards-

"Is that... is that Hogwarts?"

"Yup."

"Several castles' worth of castle, right there, in Scotland, in the absolute middle of nowhere," said Hermione, who had lived in London suburbs since birth. "This placed is _twinned_ with nowhere. And castles are defensive! What the hell did they have to defend here a thousand years ago? Were they selling the contents of the local peat bog to some Ye Olde Garden Centre or something? Is it on a leyline? A sacred burial ground? Special mud?"

"You really are a city girl, aren't you... don't worry, there are showers. Also a lake."

The two of them trudged on, and on, and on. After a little while, they were separated off into boats, to cross the aforementioned ornamental lake. Hermione was awestruck by the scale of it, but not in a good way – she felt it was far, far too big, and wanted to be back in the train compartment, or her bedroom, or somewhere generally quite small. _What's wrong with a Japanese water feature, a little footbridge, some koi carp and a thing that goes 'doink'?_, she thought, and was about to say it but thought better of it.

Hermione was beginning to annoy even herself, and Ron's ears had gone slightly red, so she decided to strike up a conversation with the guy sitting next to her. He was short and skinny, with a greasy-looking and obviously uncared-for mop of black hair held intently over his forehead with some sort of spell. He looked like a cross between an eleven-year-old Morrissey and a bullied librarian.

"Hi, I'm Hermione Granger. What's your name?"

The boy looked frightened, and didn't make eye contact. "'m... Dudley," he said, after some evident thought on the matter. "Sorry..."

"What are you apologising for? You've barely said anything!"

"Sorry about that, then," he said. Morrissey was definitely on the cards for this one. She looked a little closer at him, saw the way he held himself and in particular one of his arms, cradling it slightly and trying to disguise the pain in it. Hermione filed it under Suspicious.

"So... were you born to wizards, Dudley? Or were you raised by Muggles, like me?"

He grunted something that might have been a laugh, were he to appear capable of doing so. "Bit of both, really. Oh, look, a squid."

"Eh, what- ohhhh..."

Hermione looked over the side and saw the shape of a colossal squid, beach ball-sized eye leering back up at her with an glint in it that belong on Hannibal Lecter. It followed underneath them, with Hermione slowly going paler and paler. She hated squids, something else that the good old National Geographic Channel had credit for. They bumped into the landing without another word from Dudley or the equally spellbound Ron, and got up onto the stone stairway that led to the enormous castle.

"Hermione, you're going to be in Gryffindor, right?" Ron asked, sure of the answer.

"I... honestly don't know. It's a toss-up between them and Ravenclaw-"

"Pick Gryffindor. We're the best. All my family's in that house, so it just goes to show, eh?"

"Yes, indeed," said someone lugubriously from the background. He walked level with them and Hermione saw him. Glossy pure white hair, silver eyes that sparkled with pride and the promise of mischief, a sleek and slender frame...

She knew he was going to be a complete and absolute bell-end before he'd even said anything to her.

"Gryffindor is obviously the best house. That must be the explanation for why Slytherin gets the Cup every year. I suppose it performs a valuable public service, though. I mean," he let out a little chuckle that set the two other kids' teeth on edge. "Where else would we dump the rest of your family? Aside from a ravine, of course..."

"You watch your mouth, Draco Malfoy. There's six of us, and we'll have you upside down in a toilet before you can say brainless dungball."

"Would that be as in," he put on a panicky little-girl voice, "'Help! The brainless dungball Weasleys are attacking the son of the most powerful wizard in Britain!'? Or have I got that wrong?" He smiled again, showing a set of perfect white teeth that Hermione longed to make him swallow one by one. _Do not get angry. Be a Good Girl, like Dad wants. You'll be inside soon. There are walls and ceilings and nothing to worry about._

"Oh, Draaaacoooo! Come here, Drakie, it's your girlfriend!"

The first proper emotion crossed the boy's pale and evidently quite thin skin. He frowned and looked at the speaker whilst Ron and Hermione snickered in the background. "What do you want, Pansy?" _Bugger bugger bugger it's her it's her it __**would**__ be her stay calm and try and move behind Ron. Ron is safe. Probably._

"Oh, just the usual. Diamonds, roses, expensive perfume... and what the bloody hell do you want here, Mudblood?"

_She's seen me oh __**arse**__. Don't say anything stupid. Do NOT say anything stupid._

"Diamonds, roses, expensive perfume... you've basically listed everything. I mean, I've got a functioning brain, so I don't need to ask Mister Smooth here for one. Maybe you should... if he accedes, and if you study hard every day, you might make moron status before you leave!" She smiled brightly and fragilely. Ron was bent almost double and wheezing like a septuagenarian triathlete.

_**WHAT THE HELL PART OF 'DON'T SAY ANYTHING STUPID' DID YOU NOT UNDERSTAND? ARE YOU MAD, GIRL?**_

"You little piece of dog crap... Just you wait until we get into the castle, Mudblood. You've got nobody except the little ginger idiot; I'll have the whole of Slytherin house behind me in maybe three minutes. Keep an eye out, you little drain blockage, I'm going to make you suffer."

And she said it in such a malevolent tone that Hermione truly believed her.

"Students of Hogwarts," said McGonagall under the influence of at least ten different Sonorus spells "will please be quiet for the Headmaster's speech!" She muttered Quieting charms at herself, and due to the effect of the previous charms the mutters bounced around off of several distant buildings. The Headmaster of Hogwarts, Albus Dumbledore, stood up and immediately there was silence.

"I have this to say; to our newcomers, welcome, and to our old hands, welcome back. The school song will not be sung this year once again, as we are still trying to undo a curse on the organ and make it play something other than the Ramones. The Sorting Hat remains thankfully unsullied, so that tradition will continue as of now!"

The first years waited in a clump, trying to get towards the back of the room like a huddle of scholarly penguins. Hannah Abbot, a miniscule girl from the West Country, was the first forward and went into Hufflepuff to the surprise of nobody at all. The list dragged on for what seemed like a hellish eternity, until at last it was over for our heroine.

"Granger, Hermione!"

The young witch made her way up the steps and on to the place where the Sorting Hat lay. It was a battered, faded grey old thing; it seemed to look far older than it had any right to, and that was something given Hermione knew how old it actually _was_.

"Hmmm... a paradox," it said, as soon as she put it on. She let out a gasp of surprise. Hats didn't comment on paradoxes, or particularly much at all come to think of it. "You've the bravery and martial ability for Gryffindor, but the wit and intelligence of a Ravenclaw and the work ethic and inherent goodness of a Hufflepuff. Slytherin's out, since you're not a complete load of hyperambitious political little dribble of elk spunk," and Hermione made a mental note to look that up some time, "so I am at a loss. I think, on balance..."

The hat spoke aloud, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Hermione grinned and scanned the Gryffindor table for more flaming redhead boys like Ron. The twins her father, Molly and several wanted posters at the station had mentioned were sat down, obviously plotting something devious.

"Hi," she said cheerfully as she sat down, "I'm a friend of Ron's. You're Fred and George, right? And you're Fred, because..." what was it Ron had said... "Because you're the one who'll be embarrassed if I mention the crop of freckles on your-"

"Shut UP!" Fred hissed, and some of the nearer Gryffindors began to snigger. George looked the first-year up and down appraisingly. "You must be a mate of Ron's. He's the only other person to have seen that, aside from," he cleared his throat hurriedly, "our amazing number of satisfied girlfriends." That last bit was slightly louder than strictly necessary, and Hermione began to smirk.

They talked for a little bit as well, Hermione eager to exchange tips on Qigong kung fu in exchange for titbits on the twins' business ideas. They were master pranksters, and intended (were they ever to scrape the money together) to set up their own joke shop. All at once, the room went completely silent.

"Harry Potter."

Some gasps of breath were taken and silenced equally quickly by one of Professor McGonagall's most impressive dirty looks. A shuffling from the back and stepped forward-

"Dudley?" Hermione whispered as the boy from the boat walked past, something that now seemed very obvious. She didn't know the full extent of his abuse, but what she did know from a little further reading was that resentful non-magical couples and wizarding families alike had a habit of breaking the wand arms of unwanted or unloved scions, and she felt a pang of intense sympathy for the boy. She could see him limping slightly, favouring the side of his good arm, and even the Slytherins were deathly silent as he walked up to the Sorting Hat.

"Not Slytherin, eh?" it said, to a chorus of very carefully suppressed groans of disappointment. "Well, if you're sure... better be...

"GRYFFINDOR!"

The room exploded with cheers as three quarters of the room erupted with cheers and shouts of encouragement to the skinny, battered-looking boy. He remained unbowed, standing as tall as an eleven-year-old suffering from chronic malnutrition can, and sat next to Hermione and the other Weasleys. "I suppose you know my secret now; if it hurts that I lied, then I understand-"

"Nobody's angry with you, Harry, there's no need to apologize for every little thing! You aren't with... with them any more. You are _safe_ now."

"Thanks," he said, and his bright green eyes looked into Hermione's for the first time.

Harry Potter had his first friend.

**AN:** I couldn't stop without thanking the people who actually reviewed this whole thing. The-writing-vampire, Excel Go Boom, Poetic Folly, Fumes43, and Twilight Gleek, thank you so much for reviewing. And if you didn't review, then that's still fine, because you read it. And I'm glad you did, and I hope you are too.


	8. Here Come The Girls

It was the end of the feast, and the Sorting hadn't released any real surprises. Ron had gone to Gryffindor, to a chorus of catcalls from the Slytherin table and some acceptance from his own. Hermione, despite having been presented with a huge array of conjured delights, hadn't eaten much; her time had been spent talking to Harry, Ron and a rather uncoordinated but extremely friendly first year called Neville. The prefects promptly ushered them out of the hall, and one of the Gryffindor ones looked extremely familiar.

"My brother Percy," said Ron coldly. "We don't get on."

"Because he's an authority figure?"

"Because he's an insufferable stuck prat with his tongue glued to the teachers'-"

"There's one now, Ron." She had sharp eyes.

"Boots. That was definitely what I was originally going to say. Definitely."

Hermione smirked and revelled in the crimson flush that consumed Ron's face. Harry simply looked at his shoes again. It was something he did a lot, and no-one asked why. He'd barely touched dinner either.

They were rammed into the Gryffindor common room to cheers and an enchanted fanfare from a fifth year called Brigstocke. The fact that he had magicked his array of trumpets to resemble bottoms was simply typical of his sense of humour, which is to say not very funny. A crate of something called Butterbeer was handed out, and Ron immediately accepted. Hermione looked blankly at it and decided it couldn't hurt. It didn't, and was quite nice. Harry declined, was pressed by an increasing number of people, declined again solidly for the next fifteen minutes before the crowd lost interest, and went to his dorm. Ron followed, face contorted with concern, and a few other first-years followed too before being threatened with inventive physical violence.

"Already chumming up with the celeb, eh?" said someone from the back, earning instant disapproval. Hermione finished her own drink and snapped off to her room, fishing out her wand and launching herself onto her bed. She bounced and fished out a couple of spell volumes from her trunk of books. Her lessons started tomorrow; no point in getting behind. She jammed her nose into _Charms for the Young or Useless _and began to read, a quick Lumos lighting her page up for practice.

Just a few more pages, she thought, then I'll get some rest. Just a few more. Maybe some more. Well, I've only just started this chapter, might as well finish it all the way through... oh, that's interesting, keep going...

She was still reading when her dorm-mates staggered exhausted into the room espying Hermione in a state of considerable undress practicing a Levitation charm on the book she was learning it from. Lavender Brown became the most curious and walked warily up to the girl, trying not to disturb her in case she did something weird.

"Um... hi, I'm Lavender... don't you have a nightie?"

Hermione looked away from the book for the first time in a while, straight into Lavender's smiling, heart-shaped face. The girl's eyes widened and she squeaked, speeding under the covers and blushing furiously. A few of the other girls giggled as the book dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.

"I'm sorry, Lavender, it's just I'm used to reading like this because I've got my own room and it's more comfortable and I know that I'm babbling away right now so please feel free to slap me out of it-" Lavender took her up on the offer. It stung a little, but not too much.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome..."

"Hermione."

"Hermione, yeah. Well, I'm Lavender. Those two gigglers are Parvati Patil and Jessie Hoxton. There should be a few more girls coming in about half an hour. So..." the girl thumped down on the bed and Hermione buried herself deeper under the covers. "What's Harry Potter like?"

A muffled noise from inside the bedclothes.

"You are allowed to put your head above the covers, you know. Nobody's gonna hex you. We're Gryffindors, not Slytherins."

Hermione peeked out like a baby hedgehog who'd just seen how curling into an immobile ball was a bad idea on a busy motorway.

"OK..."

"Right. So, tell us about your new celeb friend."

Hermione blushed. "I've only known him for four hours at the most... considering how famous he is, you probably know more about him than I do. I'm Muggleborn, so wizard culture's all a bit new to me..."

"Ah... that explains it. Well, yeah. You and that Ron boy seem to be the only people he's opened up to at all. His foster parents abused him – even you have to know that, surely."

"Ron told me on the train, when he wasn't eating. So I got about five minutes." This somehow got a laugh from the other girls, and Hermione started to feel more relaxed.

"Yeah, I can see that," said an Indian girl who had to be Parvati. "I see you didn't join him; you're pretty damn skinny. What's your diet?"

Hermione thought for a moment. "High-energy snacking with a load of exercise to burn it all off." They looked at her like she'd just shot a pensioner in front of them. "What? I run and do martial arts, how's that... stare-worthy?"

"It's just unexpected, is all," said Lavender, apparently the group mouthpiece. Jessie spoke up at the back. "So long as it works. I'm desperate to shift a few pounds myself." Hermione looked quizzically at the girl in question; she was skinnier than Hermione herself was. "You don't need to. Trust me, you really don't need to."

"You're so sweet! Thanks, Hermione. Still, I'll join you for a morning run or whatever. Can't hurt, can it?"

"Nope, I guess not."

"I'll come too. I'd love to put some daft boy in a headlock to get rid of him. Fun times..." Lavender looked wistful for a moment. "Well! Hope you don't drag us out of bed too early, Hermione. Let's plan a route, I got a map of the castle and grounds off of one of the Prefects..."

And so they planned, and Lavender held court, and everyone laughed and smiled their way to sleep.

As far as first days went... Hermione could think of worse.


	9. Get Fit With Granger

It was morning. A dull, grey excuse for sunlight seeped half-heartedly into the Gryffindor dormitory, about as warming as a thrown axe. For Scotland, this was an Indian summer. Hermione was already up.

"Come on, girls, we've got to wake to get moving else it'll be too warm to run properly! Don't want to overheat..."

"I don't know if you've noticed, Hermione, but these are the Highlands. The chances of us overheating here are about as high as the ankle socks of a particularly small beetle standing in a ditch. I want at least five more minutes. At _least_."

Hermione stared for a moment, her expression attempting arch and failing to get even close. _Swish, flick, think about sunlight_. "Lumos."

The light spread brighter and brighter through the room, earning a few grumbles and the odd ballistic pillow before the others got up. "It'll make you thinner!" she cried. That did it.

Lavender and the others assembled with the speed of a foxhound scenting prey. Dressed in the red and gold tracksuits their House had provided, they tramped down to the grounds and began to run. Hermione kept the pace brisk, but not so much that anyone would actually die. They were new to it, after all-

After about eight minutes and roughly a mile, according to the map, Hermione realised she was completely alone. Looking backwards, she saw a trail of crimson-clad girls wheezing on the floor, faces the same colour as their tracksuits. "Are you all alright?"

Groans, a few mumblings and the odd shaken head made up her answer. Gradually, they staggered to their feet and traipsed up to the bushy-haired girl, only slightly mutinous. "Is all this worth it, Hermione?"

"You want to get slim and stay slim? And still eat whatever you want? Then yeah, it basically is. My Dad taught me that – he eats like a horse, and he _looks_ like someone built him out of bits of string and pencils. Come on, let's run back to where we started, and if no-one stops until we get there I'll start teaching good old-fashioned Qigong kung fu."

"What's kung foo?" asked Jessie Hoxton, who had been raised in the middle of the Norfolk Broads, a place largely deemed to be twinned with the Palaeolithic.

"Kicky-punchy-hurty stuff. Great fun for use on errant boys. Now, let's GO!" Hermione took off, and the girls ran behind her. She dared them to stop, silently, and they followed, the promise of beating up the opposite sex too strong for an eleven-year-old girl to ever resist, boys being both distasteful and basically useless after all. No-one stopped until they returned, whereupon half of them sank to the ground like they'd just been coshed and the other half threw up. Hermione sighed. This was going to take a lot of doing.

ACHTUNG! SCREEN GEBREAKEN SIE!

"Well, that's the last of the boxes. Got to say, this is quite a nice flat."

Ioan Granger dumped the crate of Shrunken furniture into the middle of the bare floor and smiled up at his wife. She'd already set up the telly, the sofa and the video player, and was now watching her battered copy of Hudson Hawk. Cora's priorities were coffee, anime, bad films and oxygen, in that order. Complete nerd. Almost friendless at university because of it. It was the same reason he loved her with all his heart.

She launched into a ten-minute impression of the psychotic man-woman from the property show. They'd been lucky to snap the property up, really; the crash had really hit prices hard, but hardworking professionals like the Grangers had been able to survive without too much in the way of hardship. Ioan proceeded to laugh like a tickled goose whilst unpacking and nearly dropped several cassettes of sci-fi shows, for which he was severely chastised. With tickling.

They settled down in front of the telly and watched proceedings on a court case. It had something to do with a priest and some kids, so they flicked over to spare their minds some fury and sat in front of a particularly good Simpsons episode for twenty minutes. After that, Ioan made tea whilst his wife unpacked the bedroom stuff and made their bed up. Then she got changed into something quite unsuitable for description in a T-rated fanfic like this one. Suffice it to say that lace was involved, but not much. Her husband was still busy making tea ten minutes later, so she jammed on a dressing gown and attempted to find him.

He wasn't in the kitchen and the tea had been put in the pot some time ago. She looked out of the window and saw him there. He was practicing.

Ioan's mood could generally be ascertained by which art's kata (or equivalent) he was going over at the time. A rule of thumb was that the slower and more regimented the art was, the more troubled he was. Right now, he was in the middle of a complex Katori Shinto-ryu iaido kata – his longsword flashed out in a blur of deceptive speed, cutting some imaginary enemy in half before removing this ghost blood and returning his blade to the saya.

"Buggeration," she muttered under her breath, and went out to talk to him with two steaming mugs of tea in her hand.

"You're thinking about Hermione, aren't you..."

Ioan spun and made to draw, but subsided. "You caught me by surprise, love."

She handed him the mug delicately and he accepted, raising it to his lips and thinking better of it when he felt one start to blister. "You didn't answer my question, Ioan. I can see something's on your mind... is it our daughter?"

"It... oh, Cora, I'm worried about her. This Pansy horror's under the same roof as our little girl, and I really don't want anyone getting hurt. Worse, Herm could really mess someone up, and considering what happened in that shop..."

"Darling, she'll be fine, though it might be worth going over multiple-opponent drills with her. Now, drink your tea and come to bed. We've got to christen the flat..." Cora Granger grinned lasciviously and drained her mug. As she sashayed back to the door, loosening her dressing gown, she heard the patter of her sprinting husband behind her.


	10. Lesson In Bigotry

The girls of Gryffindor had wheezed their way into the Great Hall, had breakfast, and panicked about what lessons they had now. First was Charms with the Ravenclaws, and so they toddled off to see Professor Flitwick.

Flitwick looked like a normal elderly wizard that had been repeatedly sat on by an elephant. A champion duellist (according to the Ravenclaw girl Hermione was sat next to), he was content to teach Charms because they were the most fun. In his opening lesson, he demonstrated how he had duelled and defeated a Dark Wizard of Grindelwald's inner circle in the '40s, using a variety of first-year charms that worked solely because the man in question did not expect it.

"By the end of the year," the wizard said, as his conjured opponent lay squeaking on the floor in helpless laughter, stiff as a board and hanging upside down in midair, "all of you will be able to do this. Some may take more than others, but all of you in here I expect to pass handily. No Slytherins, you see..." This got a laugh, especially from Hermione, who promptly blushed and went back to the spellbook. _It's not their fault they were a bunch of racist bean-brained twerps_, she thought to herself whilst casually levitating the feather Flitwick had put in front of her first time, earning ten House Points and a lighthouse of a grin. _Actually, hang about, yes it is. Oh well. You're feeling guilty now, so why stop?_

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO (Pretty bubbles! Yaaaaay!)

"Transfiguration," said Minerva McGonagall, "is without question the most taxing subject in the curriculum. I will teach it to you and you will learn it. To start off, a question. What is the general incantation for cross-metal transfiguration?"

The class looked baffled, save for Hermione. She jammed her hand up in the air with a speed that was almost depressing.

"Peralchemo, Professor."

"You are quite correct. Five points to Gryffindor, Miss Granger. Mister Malfoy, if you continue to talk in my class you will receive detention, and that would be a terrible thing for me to do on your first day, wouldn't it. Right then," she said, lowering lumps of lead onto the desks. "your task will be to transfigure this lump of metal into gold. The incantation is Peralchemo Aurus, and those who manage the transfiguration early will get a chance to start their homework – questions 1 to 15 from page 27. I expect it by our next lesson. Begin."

Almost at once, Hermione ran into problems. She spread the book open and consulted it, analyzing every word of the descriptor – what the author had said to think about to focus the spell into being – and still it did not help. About then, she tried thinking about it rationally, which resulted in even less progress. Then she focussed on the lump of lead itself. It also did nothing.

The book talked about how the magic had to be told what to do, and that that was what the spell was for – telling the magic what to do. But what if you could do it more directly? What if you made it want to do it? Magic could do anything, right? It's just getting your head right...

She thought about the lead lump, analyzed it in close detail, and rammed the idea of it to the forefront of her mind.

_You do not want to be lead. What you want, what you desire above all else, is to become gold. I can make that happen, but you have to trust me. I swear to you I will make it happen. I will make you golden._

"Peralchemo Aurus!"

The lump of lead turned into a lump of gold. Professor McGonagall swept over to her, the look of surprise on her face conspicuous by its absence. "Well done, Miss Granger. Twenty points to Gryffindor, and you may begin work on the questions. You have approximately thirty minutes."

****************** (Do stars work? I don't have any stripes to make the other joke...)

"It's a dungeon, Ron. There are things in jars, and floaty stuff, and there's at least one dribbly candle. If he has a raven called Quoth I'm calling the genre police."

Professor Snape swept into the class. "Sit down, everyone, or are you admiring my evident male beauty? My hard eyes; my slim, toned body; my perfect alabaster skin; my long hair like black silk... if you are, then continue, but sat down in front of your cauldron." Hermione began to snigger almost uncontrollably. Snape was abhorrent. Yes, his hair was long and black, but it was greasier than a Scotsman's dinner and thoroughly unkempt. His skin was pale, but pale yellow from bad food and some sort of bronchial infection. His skinniness stemmed entirely from eating not particularly much of the aforementioned bad food and his gaze was arrogant, mocking and faintly irritating. There seemed to have been a bad smell around since the Potions master had entered the room.

"Sorry," said Ron, "That was me."

"You are here," Snape said in his skin-crawling tone that made quite a few of the Slytherin girls sigh with affection, "to learn the subtle arts of potion making. This will be impossible for most of you, since most of you will deem it useless. Most of you will never realise the power that you can cook from the plants and waters of the Earth. Most of you will fail. Those who do not..." More sighs. "I will teach how to brew glory, bottle fame, and even stopper death. POTTER!" His last word was a roar, directed at the boy on the other side of Hermione. Harry seemed to want to crawl inside his own shoes.

"Yes, sir?"

"Were I to mix powdered root of asphodel and an infusion of wormwood, what would I get?"

Harry thought for a moment, frowning behind his glasses. "I don't know, sir."

"Tut tut, boy... fame clearly is not everything. They will form a sleeping potion so potent it is known as the draft of living death." His supercilious tone made Hermione want to kill him by inches, with all the anger of youth. "Have another go. What is a bezoar, where would I find one, and what does it do?"

"Er... I don't know what it is or where it is, sir... but if it's a potion ingredient, maybe it's in the supply cupboard at the back. Sir."

Anger flashed across Snape's face whilst Hermione tried not to dissolve into giggles. "Boy, a bezoar is a stone found in the stomach of a goat that will cure most poisons but not all. Once again you are wrong, and let us say... ten points from Gryffindor for backchat. You may receive one final chance, however, with this." Snape grinned again, thankfully not showing his teeth. It simply would have given Hermione a target. "What are the differences between monkshood and wolfsbane-"

"There aren't any, Professor. Monkshood is wolfsbane, and both are aconite. They, or perhaps it, are useful in combating the effects of lycanthropy."

"Granger, put your textbook away. Ten further points from Gryffindor-"

"Professor, I have not yet got my textbook out of my backpack."

"Ten points from Gryffindor for lying to a teacher... no, actually, let us take fifteen from the Mudblood. Then we're all equal together. In my house we call it weakness, so I assume Gryffindors like that sort of thing." Snape cleared his throat. "I am going to begin the lesson. On the board are instructions for a simple potion, and on your desks are the ingredients for it. I will mark your doubtless inferior efforts in the class once you have completed it and then you will discuss it over the course of eighteen inches of parchment." Hermione looked ready to explode and Harry looked silently and apologetically at her.

The Boy Who Lived apparently had a knack for potions. He was able to memorize lists in short order and had a very gentle, delicate touch with his knives and ingredients, despite the condition of his wand arm. His dexterity was rewarded with a potion finished whilst Hermione was still battling with the ingredients.

"I've finished, Professor," he said in a quavering voice, bottling some of the potion in the vial provided. "Is... is it wrong?"

Snape looked into the cauldron. A perfect Pepper-Up Potion looked back at him, silvery in colour and without the red fumes that had bedevilled half the class.

"Evidently the Granger girl has helped you. Five more points from Gryffindor... oh, wait, I cannot take any more away, can I? In which case, you will both join me for a week's detention down hereOOOOFFFFFFF!"

Hermione had boiled over. Screeching with rage, the girl exploded out of her seat and slammed a punch into the Professor's solar plexus. She then started to analyse him.

_Moving wand arm towards pocket of robes. That'll be where the wand is. Rising kick, then drop and stamp kick the knee. Assume that the opponent can perform magic without a wand. Keep attacking. Do not let him think. Use the robes. Hip toss, grab the trailing arm and snap it at the elbow. Clean break. No more work for Mum and Dad than there needs to be._

Snape went for his wand and Hermione launched a kick at him. There was a crunch, and then the girl ducked under the shocked Potions teacher and lashed her trainer into his knee, stamping the cap down and dislocating it. Snape grunted with pain and staggered backwards, whereupon Hermione spun around onto his stronger side, grabbed hold of his robes and heaved. Snape slammed into the hard stone floor face first and Hermione kicked his elbow out of place, to another pained grunt. And Snape never bothered a soul again.

The problem is that none of that happened, save inside Hermione's head. Hermione and Harry just sat there and took Snape's tongue-lashing, the girl quietly fuming and toying with the little cylinder her father had given her. She did not press the little button, though. That would be wrong.

**AN: **Thanks for the reviews and interesting points! Everyone who's reviewed is officially wonderful. Fumes43, the-writing-vampire, Nothorse, Jordrake, TwilightGleek, Poetic Folly and Excel Go Boom, thank you so much for saying nice stuff. Monkey Is Awesome, thank you for bringing me down to earth a little. I hope this chapter and the Review Cookies are to your satisfaction.


	11. Flying Without Wings

Hermione left the dungeons as quickly as society allowed, only the knowledge of Harry and Ron beside her stopping her from going at a dead run. She was _furious_ that that Snape creature had the temerity to call himself a teacher. Professor McGonagall would hear about it as soon as her next lesson was finished. History of Magic promised to be rather interesting-

"Hermione, where are you going? It's Flying in the grounds now. Come on!"

The colour steadily drained from the girl's face as she rejoined her companions. It was another joint lesson with the Slytherins, joy of joys, so there was going to be some rivalry. At least it wasn't more bloody-minded bastardry from Snape, she reasoned to herself unsuccessfully.

Ron looked excited – he came from wizard stock, and he'd been flying brooms for a while. Harry and Hermione looked decidedly less so. In the case of the former, it was largely because there had been a proper old birch besom in Uncle Vernon's 'special cupboard'. In the case of the latter, it was something else entirely.

The sky was cloudless and the air brittle – it had cleared over the course of the day – and the windows of Hogwarts Castle shone like polished diamond. The sense was one of majesty, of the huge open space that the grounds had, the school the only landmark for mile upon mile upon mile. All the vastness of wild Scotland was laid out before the class.

And Hermione was scared stiff.

She could feel the crushing weight of the blue sky in the core of her bones, the sense of space and scale making her want to shut herself in a box and cry for a while. It had begun with her primary school's annual Year 2 trip to study the Norfolk Broads. The great, flat fenland went on for a damp, marshy eternity, with nary a tree or standing stone to support the iron-grey sky. It had simply overwhelmed Hermione's senses, heightened by her own magic, until she had keeled over into the peat and stopped breathing, pale as death itself and frothing at the mouth with fear.

Agoraphobia, the doctor they'd been to see had said. Hermione had lived for much of her life in London and it had affected her perception of space somehow. The conversation had devolved into psychobabble at that point, and there were long strings of German that seemed to encompass a single word despite going on for three years at a time, and it had all made Hermione's head being to hurt and she had needed a large amount of ice-cream to calm her down.

She wasn't over the shock at knowing what she did, at knowing that something was wrong in the mind she prized so much.

Knowing that hurt.

"You will command your brooms to spring into your hands. Step forward, all of you. Position your hand over your broom and say 'Up!'". There was something very jolly-hockey-sticks about Madam Hooch. She seemed free of the general games teacher notion that sports were the only thing that mattered in your entire educational career, and that being good at them gave you the right to terrify children with various punishments. Despite her athleticism, Hermione found team sports about a few orders of magnitude less comfortable than a night in a rusty iron maiden listening to Iron Maiden – one of her dad's rubbish bands.

"Up," she said, in a half-hearted manner. Nothing happened. She sagged with relief.

"Not all of you will get it first time like Messrs Potter and Weasley – three points to Gryffindor each, by the way – so just keep trying until you get it to jump." Madam Hooch's voice still had that cheery tone to it.

Hermione had now decided she hated Madam Hooch.

"Up. Up. Up. Up. Look, I don't want to do this anymore than you do. I hate school games. I hate the thought of placing my trust in the flight capabilities of what is, at heart, a large stick. So you don't actually have to move when I say up." On the last 'Up', it jumped into her hand. Hermione suddenly hated the broom as well. The knotholes were smirking at her, she knew it.

"Right then, that's everyone – oh, pick it up, Longbottom, it'll be easier – so mount your brooms and kick off from the ground when I sound my whistle."

Hermione cautiously, whilst mostly looking up at the terrifying expanse of sky above her, lifted her leg up and over the broom. As the trainer-ed foot came down onto the solid earth once more, it slipped on some wet grass and propelled her forward. This might not have been an issue, had not the broom taken this to mean 'go' – in this instance convenient shorthand for 'go absolutely berserk and shoot to hyperspace'.

The young girl rocketed screaming into mid-air at an incredible rate of knots. She didn't stop screeching until the broom lurched, about sixty feet up, and she was hurled off. At that point, she started desperately hoping that Madam Hooch would come and pick her up. I mean, she was the flying instructor, right? She had to be good on a broom. She had to look after her pupils-

The word that came immediately to mind, in the eyes of the thunderstruck Harry Potter, was 'crunch'. 'Splat' would also have sufficed, as would 'whud', 'bam', and 'crack'.

"That'll be a bit sore, eh?" Ron joked. "My brothers've had worse. They're all fine."

There was a bit of weak coughing from over by the roof that Hermione had slammed into. She stood up tremulously, realised this was a bad idea on a roof, scrabbled for purchase, slipped, and thumped into the ornamental paving around the edge of the school with a sickening thump. It was a bone-breaky thud. Hermione didn't get up. The children crowded around her, the Gryffindors to see if there was anything they could do and the Slytherins (led by Pansy Parkinson) largely to either gloat or stick the boot in surreptitiously.

Madam Hooch was stunned. Nothing like that had happened in twenty years. "Stand BACK you lot! Give her air!" She bent over the stricken girl. "I'm moving her to the hospital wing. Anyone so much as breathes on a broom before I get back will be expelled, then fed to the subject of a seventh-year Care of Magical Creatures lesson. _Levicorpus_."

She levitated Hermione's still, blood-spattered form in front of her and set off to the hospital wing, careful not to disturb her.

Hermione awoke in a bed with several faces hovering over her. Through the gaps she could see a roof. Good. Roofs meant no sky meant _safe_.

"Hermione? Are you alright?"

She looked into the eyes of Ron Weasley, who had asked – after her accident – what felt to her like the most idiotic question on Earth, wizarding or otherwise.

"Durrrr. She fell out of the damn sky from gods alone know how high up, smashed into a roof and then a pavement. Both times face first. What do you think, Ron?"

The voice wasn't hers, but Harry's. Ron gaped and looked at him in a slightly surprised way, and the Boy Who Lived quailed. "I'm sorry, Ron, I didn't mean it, please don't hit me or anything, please-"

"Hit you? Why would I hit you? What would be the point?"

"Because I was bad..."

"Er, sorry to interrupt your plot-related point, lads, but I would quite like to tend to my daughter. The short version: Get out of this ward right now." The boys ran like hell and Ioan's face joined the looming convention.

"Dad?"

"Ssshhh, my girl. It's OK. It's going to be alright."

As her father cuddled Hermione close, Cora took Madam Pomfrey to one side. "Is she going to be alright?"

"I would think so. Wizards are pretty hard to kill – something about us makes us tougher, more resistant to injury. She's in no pain, though. You should know, Madam Granger, you made the Numbing Potions up this morning. And you did a damn fine job of work, too."

Cora smiled, dabbed at her eyes, and went to join her family.

**AN: **Much love and many cookies to the people who reviewed Chapter 10, and indeed every other chapter as well. I adore and thank you all.


	12. Zatomione

**AN:** I'd like to thank everyone for their patience with dealing with my update schedule. I know I'm dropping off a bit, but what with the bloody degree and everything I can't cater to the story as much as I would like.

It had been almost a week since Hermione's crash, and she had recovered from injuries that would kill a normal human being. She refused to use the term Muggle as a matter of principle; it was wrong, she reasoned, to denigrate a society that outnumbered your own by a good few orders of magnitude and possessed the means to destroy you with a snap of the fingers. Mudblood was worse; it felt disgusting in her mouth, like someone had pushed her into the peat bogs out the back.

As such, she did her best to ignore it every time the Slytherins muttered it at her. Or stole her books and coated their covers in the word. Or hurled it at her from a dark corridor along with some Dungbombs and ink pellets. At least she had mastered Scourgify quickly. She had to; it was either that or firing jinxes into the corridor with gay abandon. And that might hit someone innocent, or lose her House Points or something.

It was with a heavy heart that she trudged into her Defence against the Dark Arts lesson with the selfsame Slytherins. As usual, she sat with Ron and Harry in the far corner out of projectile reach. Professor Quirrell, a man who managed to make Neville Longbottom look composed, stepped forward.

"R-r-r-right then, c-class, s-settle down now. T-today we will b-b-be eschewing the usual b-books and exerc-s-s-cises for p-p-p-practical th-theory. Why is th-this imp-p-portant?"

Ron's hand beat Hermione to the punch, something that shocked her.

"M-mister Weasley?"

Ron's hand gripped the desk top a little harder than normal. "Because it's one thing knowing a lot of spells, Professor, but another to use them efficiently. You have to be strategic and swift and smart."

"P-p-p-perfect answer, young w-wizard! T-ten points t-to G-g-g-Gryffindor!" Ron looked at his feet and sank into his chair a little further as the Professor launched into an explanation of the Stunning and Reviving Charm that coated much of the floor in unnecessary spittle. Hermione was completely bemused by her neighbour's answer – it had been better than the one from the book. That was an alien concept for her, though Mister Eli had tried to get that out of her with applications of logic.

"Where did all that come from, Ron?"

"Wizard chess manual. I play it a lot... not really very good at it but the guys down at the village club where I come from say I'm getting better."

"L-l-l-let's get y-you on y-y-your feet, then, c-c-c-class! P-pair up!"

It happened very quickly. Hermione was used to being picked last at every games lesson so it didn't come as a surprise that she was again. Along with-

_Oh no._

"Professor, why have I been left with the Mudblood? I don't want her looking at me."

_You remember what we said before about not saying stupid stuff? It applies double here and now. You know that Quirrell will protect you. Does __**she**__?_

"Oh, well if it makes you feel any better I could wear a blindfold while I beat you."

_YOUNG LADY WE ARE GOING TO HAVE WORDS LATER!_

"G-girls, please-"

"No, Professor, it's fine." Hermione pulled off her tie and wound it around her eyes, deftly knotting it tight. She couldn't see a thing and she slipped into a trance.

The classroom was deathly silent save for Parkinson's outraged tantrum. Hermione breathed slow as a sniper, waiting for the first sign of movement.

"W-well, that's everyone p-p-paired up. BEGIN!"

Hermione _moved_. Pansy's stunner thumped into empty space as her opponent span out of the way and let off one of her own. The red light was barely visible through her wrappings and she heard more movement. It was purposeful and loud, though the walker didn't intend for it to be.

"STUPEFY," roared Draco Malfoy from across the room. Hermione's head turned towards him slowly and moved again, ducking into a roll and sending another Stunner his way. He dodged right into the path of Hermione's low, sweeping kick. It sent him crashing to the floor and Hermione stood up, settling into a low Shotokai forward stance, front leg at a perfect angle and back leg ramrod straight as her wand pointed between the boy's eyes, unmoving as an Egyptian pyramid.

"Stupefy," she said, and the force of the spell knocked Malfoy's head back into the bare wood of the floor.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOooooh crap.

"Miss Granger, I am extremely surprised at you!"

"I cannot say that I am, Minerva," oiled Snape. "She is almost as bad as the Potter brat. Both worse than the other, in their own special way, although he-"

"Severus, please. This is not about Harry Potter, who apparently has a rather good Stunning Spell on him. This is about Hermione Granger, who apparently has an even better one, along with a knack for both duelling and ritualised humiliation. Tell me, Hermione, are you quite certain you have not come from the future by means of magic most complex and dire?"

Hermione had heard all the rumours about Albus Dumbledore being what could be described by the charitable as "differently sane" and by Cora Granger as "so far round the twist he could market himself as a helter-skelter, and probably does on a slow morning". It still puzzled her greatly. "No, Professor. Not that I know of."

Dumbledore looked at her, his twinkly blue eyes seeming to strip Hermione away layer by layer, but in a nice way – something a bit difficult to convey without doing it, or indeed without being Albus Dumbledore.

"Very well, just a thought. Lemon drop?"

Hermione tapped her top pocket and blushed, even more confused than before. "Er, no thank you, Professor. I've, er, got some Pocky."

"Ah, those Muggle biscuit things of which your mother is so fond. I believe my favourite flavour is the banana one."

Hermione quailed.

"Hermione, what the Headmaster is about to convey is the seriousness of the situation you find yourself in. You physically assaulted another student during a lesson-"

"Substantially after she herself was attacked, Minerva, and by all accounts whilst she was intentionally blindfolded. A somewhat cowardly attack, you would agree."

"Well, yes-"

"But that does not mean Miss Granger will be excused punishment. Nor, however, shall Mister Malfoy. A week's detention should suffice for them both. Minerva, I would like you to oversee Mister Malfoy's – put him to whatever use you see fit. As for Miss Granger... perhaps the best course of action would be for me to oversee her detention personally in the library. Their detentions will be starting tonight."

"Headmaster," Snape said, visibly rankled, "Granger has detention with me tonight, and for a week afterwards-"

"Ah, yes, Severus, but we must remember that backchat is substantially less severe than unwarranted physical violence. If they clash, well... I can only offer my apologies. I will of course be informing Mr and Mrs Granger of the exact facts of the day's events, which Professor Quirrell has been kind enough to relate to me. And now, Miss Granger, you may take your leave. I will see you tonight in the library at seven o'clock. Oh, and Hermione?"

Hermione's sprint for the door was abruptly curtailed.

"Do bring some banana Pocky, will you?"

Minerva McGonagall goggled again as Hermione nodded, squeaked, and took off for the safety of her Charms class with a small thunderclap.

**AN#2: **Thank you again for all the reviews and favourites generated by Chapter 11. It's been very interesting to read what people think and I reckon productive too. *hugs you all and provides you with Review Cookies*


	13. BONUS LONG: Cutie Came PreBroken

**AN: **Rachel, if you're reading this and you get to the bit with Seamus Finnegan... I am so sorry and please do not hit me with sticks.

The girl walked down the corridor towards the library, carrying a box and trying not to cry. She'd never had a detention before. It had only been a _week_, for goodness' sake! Her whole body was shaking, and she rested against the wall for a few seconds. Then she put the box down and took her tie off again, wrapping it around her eyes. No-one was going to comment; after all, in a wizard school what was a little more weirdness going to matter?

Besides, it meant people couldn't see her cry.

She picked up the box, clicking her tongue inside her mouth to navigate the corridor. Hermione'd picked the technique up from a book about a blind man who had run a marathon in the 1900s and applied it to her daily life pretty seamlessly over the course of a few years. There had been... teething problems, and she still wasn't all that confident on stairs, but in a corridor or a classroom...

The sob rushed up through her and she could feel her tie begin to get damp. Oh well. The library was here anyway. She turned and pushed the door open.

"Ah, Hermione. I'm glad you could join Harry and myself tonight. We've already got out some Potions books, although Madam Pince refused to let us start lighting fires in a room full of dry parchment. Do take a seat."

Dumbledore's gift was to have perfect control over his speech. The sight of a girl who was quite obviously shaken perturbed him, but he wouldn't be Albus Dumbledore if he couldn't comfort a child in his care.

Hermione made her way over to the chair nearest Harry and sat down, taking her makeshift blindfold off. What she saw was wonderful.

The table that she, Harry and Dumbledore were sat at was covered in books, notes and parchment. Potions, Defence and Transfiguration books – and even academic papers on the Potions front – were strewn around the table. And of course there was a ready supply of sweets, largely from Albus Dumbledore. Hermione's box simply added to the pile.

"Hey, Hermione, guess what? Professor Dumbledore got me out of the detention with Snape to come here! Isn't that fantastic? I don't have to scrub cauldrons or cut up frogs!" The boy hugged, and almost immediately withdrew back into his normal self. "Sorry. Against the rules. Freak doesn't touch normal people."

"What on Earth do you mean by-"

Dumbledore defused the situation admirably. "Hermione, may I ask what's in your box?"

"Erm," Hermione shuffled in her seat, "Pocky. Lots of Pocky. Mum found an importer and you said you liked banana so it's mostly that but I also got other flavours like chocolate and chocolate-almond and strawberry and banana-chocolate which is my favourite but banana on its own is still nice and and I wanted to make sure that you liked me because you gave me a detention and I don't want people to hate me-"

"Hermione, if you would care to look at the large banner over the door?"

She did. The banner said in rather large letters "You are not being punished". She turned back to the Headmaster, eyes twinkling like sapphires.

"Why on Earth would I punish you for defending yourself? Malfoy attacked you from behind because you had the temerity to be better at spellcraft than his housemate. She worships the ground he walks on; he uses her as an attack dog. As it is, you stood up for yourself and were rather impressive in dispatching him, though Professors Quirrell and Snape disagree with me on that matter. I had to look like I was punishing you, Hermione, and I am sorry if that upset you. May I have a packet of banana-chocolate?"

"Of, of course, Professor," Hermione squeaked, and levitated a packet out from the box. Dumbledore took it, thanked her, and Transfigured the cardboard packaging into a paper plane. It swooped and soared and dived like a hungry gannet and eventually impacted with the bottom of the bin. It was at that point that Hermione noticed he'd been doing all that magic with nought but a stick of banana-chocolate Pocky.

"Sir, how did you-"

"Wandless magic, my dear. And often I find that the show is important for it. Perhaps one day you will learn it too; the theory behind wandless magic is quite intriguing..."

And so they discussed wandless magic, and potion theory – Dumbledore watching Harry's voracious appetite for Potions knowledge with interest and awarding him twenty points for his House when he reeled off, in exacting detail, how to make an OWL-standard potion – and as many other things as they could think of. It went on for three hours until finally Harry broke. He slumped down onto the journal he'd been reading and lay there, the rims of his milk bottle-thick glasses pressing into his face. It was one of the sweetest things that Hermione had seen in her life.

It was the first time that Harry had been happy. Truly happy, that is to say, not tempered with relief or paranoid terror or other such lesser emotions. And so he slept, and Dumbledore levitated him to the Gryffindor dormitory tower, and kept discussing the books Hermione was reading with elaborate detail and language until she was tired too.

At four in the morning, Ron Weasley awoke with a start from a very odd dream indeed. It vanished into ether as soon as he tried to recall it but there was a dim recollection of long hair and robes of a feminine cut. He assumed it could be put down to 'growing up', that mysterious phrase that seemed to be his parents' answer to every question he had about himself, and rolled over to sleep when he saw something considerably stranger.

Harry Potter was under his bed, arms threaded through the slats like he was being crucified. The word was one his father used, and it had happened to a man 2000 years ago with a name that Ron dimly recalled as something like Jeeves.

And the Boy-Who-Lived was whimpering.

The sound was so pathetic and so fundamentally _wrong_ that Ron instinctively wanted to just hold him and tell him things were going to be alright. So that was what he did. He clawed his way out of the too-tight bedclothes and pattered over to Harry's side, the cold floorboards creaking gently beneath his feet. He slipped down beside him and saw something else.

Harry Potter was, despite all looks, fast asleep.

Somehow, that made it all _worse_.

Ron liked to think of himself as a man of the world, in the peculiar way that eleven-year-old boys almost always do. He knew, for example, where Egypt and Romania were, because he had been there to visit his near-omnipresent family. He knew that Muggles had been into space on giant fireworks, because Fred and George had told him and asked if he wanted to have a go himself and he hadn't been able to walk properly for two months. And he knew that boys didn't cry unless there was a very good reason.

_All I know about is snippets off the news, _he thought to himself. _And I know the _Prophet's _digging deeper, but they've not found anything else and yet here he is. Sleeping like... like that, just hanging there, it must hurt him so badly. There're cuts on his wrists from the bedboards too, oh Merlin, what did those Muggles _do _to you?_

"R... Ron?"

Harry's voice was hoarse and even more subdued than it usually was. The teachers had just decided to put charms on their ears after the first couple of days – if they told him to speak up, he made an odd strangled noise like a goose backfiring and clammed up completely. Ron was very carefully not crying.

"Mate, what were you doing? You've got cuts all up your wrists, why were you sleeping like that?"

"Doesn't every freak do that?"

Ron was not crying much more carefully.

It was a bright morning, which meant there was fractionally less iron-grey cloud cover than usual. Hermione had the feeling she was on the set of an old film noir as she trotted ahead at the rest of her friends' jogging pace, rather similar to the fast walk of an arthritic snail in her considered and charitable opinion.

"Well, we're getting better! All of us! Now, let's head back to the castle because I am not a huge fan of that sky! We'll be learning some combinations when we get back inside too!"

"Combinations?" someone gurgled in a disturbingly... biological manner in the background, possibly from prone on the floor.

"Hitting people more than once."

This got a ragged cheer so Hermione ran with it. The Gryffindor girls managed to wheeze their way back towards the Great Hall, Nearly Headless Nick noticing them in passing and wondered if they were training for the local militia. The fact that there hadn't been a militia in Hogsmeade for several centuries hadn't penetrated his large, glowing head. As they went through a quick and basic kung-fu combination drill, he drifted over to offer his assistance.

Nick instantly regretted it. The use to which he was put was targeting practice, and even though the blows never made contact (it being physically impossible for them to do so) the psychosomatic pain was unavoidable. So were the blows. The ghost took it well, though, only wincing once as one of Hermione's demonstration strikes passed through both his kidneys. The girls were unfit to an almost absurd degree, but they were quick and eager learners. Some of them were shoo-ins for Quidditch trials next year anyway, and additional reflex training would make them a fine crop of Chasers, Seekers and Keepers.

Once the drill was over and the Gryffindor ghost allowed himself to curl up into a whimpering ball and dry-heave in a corner, the girls – whom Lavender insisted on calling the Fitness and Magic Association – sat for gossip and breakfast. Hermione powered through a couple of rounds of triple-fried-egg chilli'n'chutney sandwiches to the amazement of onlookers (her father had gotten the recipe from a Scouser in a pub called Dave) and caught up on the gossip. Unwillingly.

"Youse girls want to hear something really _juicy_, huh?" A ratty-looking boy with an Irish brogue that didn't so much lilt as dance a reel with a leprechaun riding its shoulders said before introducing himself to them as Seamus Finnegan. Hermione opined that it had to have been made up, to general amusement.

"Well," he said, obvious entering Storytelling Mode as his voice lowered and became almost husky, "As I was a-passing my comrades in arms in the Gryffindor dormitory-"

"Too-ra-li-ay?" Hermione proffered to more laughter, even from Seamus.

"Well, in any event, I was passing them and I heard a strange noise. Like a purring sort of sound, a little husky and hoarse, a term which is the name of my dear grandmama's pub down in Kerry. Aha, thinks I, a mystery for the solving! So I hunt for the source of this strange little noise. Twas almost like a wee baby bird, so it was. And I found the source o' it a-curled up in the lap and the arms of no lesser personage than Ronald Bilius Weasley!"

"I thought the B stood for Brian," said Kara St. James, who whilst lovely and as sweet a girl as you could ever hope to meet could have been charitably described as unable to outwit moss.

"Well, you learn something new every day, do you not, Miss St. James, although that's like as not because you learned it yesterday and forgot." Seamus was not himself particularly disposed to charity. "But, I shall tell to you now the source of this sound." He leaned in closer. They all did, Hermione rolling her eyes.

"Twas a wee small thing by the name of Harry Potter, and I'm of the opinion you can be drawing your own conclusions," said Seamus with the merest fleck of triumph.

The resultant squee from the FMA drowned out most of the conversation. The boys'-love genre of teen fiction was huge in the wizarding world. The worlds created, although almost uniformly badly-written styleless tripe, appealed to teenage witches, with Madam Desdemona Trillington – one of the genre's chief offenders – possessed of a multimillion-Galleon fortune. As such, the fans of Ms Trillington were overjoyed at the plot of 'Suffering In Silence' occurring not ten feet away from where they slept of a night. Hermione, having been raised somewhat differently, shot Seamus a look of purest, deepest poison.

This one, she knew, wasn't going to go away.

oooOOOooo/oooOOOooo/oooOOOooo...

"Will you please all calm down," intoned Professor McGonagall from on high during the Transfiguration lecture. They were attempting to Transfigure a placemat into a marmot without much success. Hermione hadn't got it either and the lesson was nearing its end. She'd have to stay behind to talk to Professor McGonagall about it – lunch was next anyway and this was more important than mere food. She'd grab something later.

Then the end of the lesson came, and she wasn't the only person hanging back. "Hermione, what are you doing here?" Ron's voice was a whisper as hoarse as Harry's usual speaking voice. "This doesn't concern you."

"I want her to be here, Ron. She's my friend. She doesn't hit. Nobody here hits. Why is that, Professor?"

McGonagall, about to launch into a speech, sputtered to a halt at the genuine puzzlement in the young boy's voice. "Well, er, Harry... we don't want to, to hit you-"

"We see no reason to, Harry," said Cora from the doorway. "You're a good boy. We know it's true, and we know you've done nothing wrong, too." She walked into the room slowly.

"Where did you come from?" demanded McGonagall. "Aren't you supposed to be helping Kevin Entwhistle's teeth after someone transfigured a Bludger to look like his pet cat?"

"Fixed him up with braces and a sealant, Professor, it wasn't even that bad of a break once we got him to open his mouth and stop screaming. I was going to see how my daughter was doing. Now, what was it you wanted to speak to young Harry about?"

"I don't know why, but Mister Potter is hiding bleeding wounds under his robes. I only hope that in the absence of physical violence provided by the Dursleys he has not been taking the task upon himself."

"Professor, it's just the way freaks sleep. Uncle Vernon said so, and so did Aunt Petunia. Freaks are only good for two things... doing chores and being stress relief. Uncle Vernon liked it when I was stress relief. He said I should enjoy it too. Should I? It hurt, but... should I have?"

The room fell silent. Cora broke it by running over to the boy and wrapping him up in her arms.

"Don't ever think that, Harry. Just... just don't. 'Mione, send a message on to your next lesson that Harry will not be attending on medical grounds. Minerva, I need to book in some more counselling appointments with Healer Jephraim from St Mungo's, would you be so good as to perform the firecall? I'd do it myself, but..." Cora gave an eloquent shrug and held Harry's hand. "You and I are just going to nip off to the hospital wing. We're going to make sure you're kept safe."

The pair walked out of the room, Cora's steps matching Harry's. Ron looked at Hermione and her at Ron. Then they both looked at Professor McGonagall.

"I... I'm sorry, you two. It must hurt to see him like that."

"Yes... but we are our own people, Professor. He has his story and we have our own, and it's sad, and I hate that it happened to him of all people... but it happened. We do not identify ourselves by the misfortunes of others, do we Ron?"

Ron nodded and looked scared. It was the big words. "I just... he brought out my mother's side in me, Professor. And I held him. I'm sorry if it caused trouble but I couldn't do anything else. I'm his friend. Is he... is he coming back to the tower tonight?"

"Probably not, Mister Weasley; Madam Pomfrey will likely want to keep him under observation for tonight at least. Now go and get lunch."

Hermione and Ron left the room, and Professor McGonagall picked up the note that the boy had surreptitiously left on the front desk. She read it and her mouth set itself in an even thinner line.

Harry Potter didn't go back to Gryffindor Tower that night, or for several nights after that.

On the twelfth night, Ron looked carefully at a newspaper clipping his mother had sent him of the Dursleys awaiting trial, and he was very careful – double-checking that Seamus was asleep – before doing something that was definitely not crying if anyone in his dorm asked.

Hermione was doing something similar, only using a Quieting charm and her stuffed Astro Boy plushie for comfort instead of justice.

To each their own, thought Dumbledore, as he sat with Fawkes monitoring the instruments that littered his private study. If only I had known...

I will never plot again.


	14. Locked Room Mysteries

**AN:** I trust you're all well! It occurs I've not put in a disclaimer. Oh well. It should be patently obvious by now that I only own the clothes on my back, this computer, a couple of bottles of chocolate milkshake and an old copy of Viz. J.K. Rowling is a multi-millionaire authoress and I'm a physics undergrad. Also, she wrote My Immortal as a Take That to the fandom. Totally.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo get you!

It had been two weeks since Harry had been removed from Gryffindor Tower. The Hogwarts rumour mill, fast-grinding as an Ibizan hooker in a Club 18-30 night, was full of causes for this. Often the theories were at cross-purposes and this had led to some truly spectacular catfights amongst the older years. For their part, the Fitness and Magic Association – presently jogging through an insidious, soul-sapping drizzle – laid the blame for Harry's 'forced separation' from Ron squarely at the door of about five different people. They were even arguing as they ran, at a proper pace and with decent stride pattern.

Hermione was amazed. Ever since she'd started doing kick combinations stolen from karate, the girls' running had improved by a colossal margin in only two scant weeks. Most of them were able to run the distance without looking like bronchial tomatoes, and Lavender Brown had already lost two pounds and was up to red belt standard in the karate style they'd chosen. Admittedly, it was only one rung off the bottom, but it was a start and it kept the girls' ringleader on her side.

They were her friends, and friends were something she desperately needed right now.

The Slytherin girls had started slowly but now bullied her almost constantly. Dungbombs were levitated over her as she was reading and detonated in her face, the crowd just happened to knock her into walls and doorways as she went to class. Sometimes she was cornered by two of the bigger girls. This wasn't a problem in itself, but they usually made sure that Snape was nearby and she was shedding House points faster than she could make them up in the classes not run by nepotistic psychopaths.

Finally, she had had enough. After a loss of thirty points – twenty for violence in corridors and ten more for slander when she protested the Slytherins' instigation of proceedings – she went to talk to her mother about it. Cora was growing into Potions under the tuition of Madam Pomfrey and had ambitions growing inside her of becoming her apothecary.

"Well, Hermione... this is a very serious charge. But it's one I know to be true, having had to handle most of the people you get attacked by. Dad says well done for not actually killing them, and that he's sorry he couldn't be here." Ioan Granger was attending to the practice they ran back in Islington, a compromise they had reached with Dumbledore before the start of term.

Hermione fondled the little bronze cylinder in her pocket. She did whenever her father went away; it was a comfort. She wasn't sure quite why, though. Perhaps it was simply because her father had held it. "Mum... I don't think it's going to change anything. Really. It's like Dad says, you can take away a Bolo's main gun, you're still dealing with a Bolo."

Cora sniggered and ruffled her daughter's hair. Hermione was a smart girl and Cora knew that, but she sometimes had trouble differentiating fantasy and reality. Of course, since she was working for a witch in a boarding school in Scotland with plenty of athletic young people wandering into her care, the line between them was... blurred a bit.

"I'll speak to Minerva about it. We'll get this sorted out properly, love, don't fret."

"Mum…"

"Yes love?"

"When's Harry coming back to Gryffindor Tower?"

Cora racked her brains for a suitable answer, and couldn't come up with anything at all. Poppy Pomfrey didn't want to let him out of her sight at all for the period up until Christmas. It was only after Albus had browbeaten her into submission, in that twinkly smiley way he had that always made the elder Granger woman feel like he was up to something, that he'd been allowed to go to his lessons at all. Whilst the man wandered happily and dementedly through life, he certainly cared about the children of his school.

The bell went, calming Cora's fraying nerves, and Hermione skittered off towards her Charms lesson. Cora smiled after her, picking up her battered-looking acoustic guitar. When work was slow, she often just practiced it – she was competent, but not yet good enough to write her own power ballads, which was basically what she wanted out of life. Right now she played something she knew, a rhythm and blues track from when it didn't apply to MOR castratos.

The rest of the hospital wing was serenaded for a while, whether they liked it or not.

-=Doodledee doo-doooo CHAP-TER BREEEEAK!=-

That night, when they knew everyone would be asleep, Hermione and Ron met in the Gryffindor common room with their and Harry's wands ready for action. They snuck out of the portrait hole, not even breaking the rhythm of the Fat Lady's jackhammer snore, and made for the Infirmary. As they got there, though, they spotted Dumbledore walking out of it with an apologetic smile on his face, and they hid in the shadow of a statue so supremely ugly it could have been a Modernist piece.

The ancient Headmaster wandered past, and the duo sprang out from their hiding place when they couldn't hear his footsteps. Silent as a fieldmouse when the hawks are hunting, they crept over to Harry's bed and Hermione tried to think of a charm to wake him up. Ron settled for prodding the boy in the chest, which seemed to work.

"Hnnh, nuh, Uncle? What did I – oh, hi Ron. Hi Hermione."

There were slightly crusted tear tracks down the boy's cheeks. Hermione tried not to look.

"Hello Harry. Would you like to go on an adventure?"

"Do I get a choice?"

Ron had a brainwave. "Well, it does mean you don't have to go to sleep for some time yet-"

"I'm there when do we leave is it now please let it be now please please please?"

Hermione handed Harry's wand back to him and he grasped it like the line from a rescue ship. A smile dragged her lips up and she helped the Boy Who Lived to his feet. "Come on, Ron, tell Harry what you told me."

"Well, Fred and George – they're my brothers, you've met them, they set that Transfigured Bludger on Entwhistle," Ron paused whilst Harry chuckled. Entwhistle had been sicced on him by Malfoy, and no-one had seen it except the twins. "They were walking past that big, weird door on the third floor when they heard Snape and Quirrell having this proper barney. Both screaming blue murder at each other, all about loyalty or something, Fred didn't hear a lot. There wasn't any magic, more's the pity, but I thought, since no-one's around… we'd have a little look ourselves! What do you say?"

Harry's face creased with thought. "I'll do it. We can be invisible all the way up there."

"Er, Harry… neither of us can do Disillusionment charms. That's NEWT stuff. Hermione might be able to…" Ron looked at her quizzically and the girl shook her head. "See?"

"But… but Dumbledore gave me this cloak…"

Harry pulled a silver cloak over his head and disappeared.

"Bloody hell-" Ron started to say before making an odd little noise like 'gnnnygh' and dropping to the ground.

"Language, Ron!" said Hermione. "And pick yourself up off the floor."

"Hweeeeegh", hweeeeeghed Ron, and struggled to his feet.

"You can all come under it," said Harry's currently disembodied head. "Dumbledore said it was an invisibility cloak. It's big… and freaks aren't worth something like this just for themselves."

Ron lifted the cloak up and snuck under it, Hermione following suit quickly. The three of them walked in step, Harry quickly picking up their technique of moving silently, and as they got to the third-floor corridor, they found they were not alone.

Professor Snape looked around for a moment, tapped the doorknob with his wand and stepped inside.

**AN #2: **Thank you to all those who read and reviewed the last chapter. In particular, I'd like to extend appreciation to TheAttentionJustEncouragesHer, who is new and raised an excellent point about where the fic's going for the first book. Much love is also due to aquarela, who recognizes that Rowling's description of dealing with child abuse is a fundamentally flawed one. It's about the only complaint I have with the series.

**AN #3: **Finally, while you wait for my own sporadic updates, I urge you to read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Eliezer Yudkowsky is far funnier, wittier and smarter than I am ever likely to be, and it shows in his work. Farewell until next time!


	15. First Boss

**DISCLAIMER: **I do not own Harry Potter, although I do now own a Joy Division t-shirt. Dance to them. I command it.

_Deep in the bowels of a castle, something stirred. It sniffed the air – prey-things, little prey-things all around. It saw none, though. They are elsewhere. Find the club. Hunt them down. Eat. Live. Be dominant._

_It dragged itself woozily to its feet and set off, beady eyes following the light of an open door. Find the prey-things. Eat the prey-things. Fight off others like itself._

_Kill._

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Hermione Granger was not in the Great Hall for breakfast this morning, something the Fitness and Magic Association commented on heavily. They knew that she'd been sneaking around after dark… well, maybe guessed would be a better word, since Kara had woken up in the night and even she knew how to count. It had been going on for a week now, and word was that Ron Weasley was outside after hours too. The general consensus was that Hermione had been using her secret ninja powers to smuggle Ron out for clandestine trysts with his love Harry, which basically meant the people who believed that were the ones who could shout the loudest. Lavender Brown, whose stomach was already toning up from martial arts and had a gossip's whisper that could carry across Glastonbury Festival, was Hermione's chief ally.

And Christ knew she needed one.

Ioan was away on business more and more, and for longer stretches at a time. Cora was busy with Potions half the time, sharing the workload with the much more experienced Madam Pomfrey and trying not to get anything wrong. Ron had heard Seamus talking about the rumours and had been forced to have his jaw spelled and wired shut whilst it healed (Seamus was himself covered in oozing boils from a Furnunculus). Harry was… well, how could she go to Harry, he had enough on his plate without her dumping her troubles on him too. No-one else could be trusted, especially not the teachers. This was beyond their remit.

Hermione knew that bullies had to be stood up to, and knew that she was the brightest girl in the year by a long way, and had nothing to be jealous of. It was totally irrational to want to move aside for them in the corridor. It meant she was likely mentally unstable in addition to being a freshly minted coward. People like Parkinson were _made_ to be stood up to. It was what she existed for. So how could one look, one snide, palpably distasteful look make her want to run away and curl up in a ball in a toilet cubicle, like she was doing now? It _didn't make SENSE_.

Hermione Granger hated things that did not make sense. The knowledge that it probably never would made things even more difficult, and trying to do the smart thing, to look towards the painful truth and see why it hurt like Mister Eli had taught her, just made her head spin and eyes start sparkling. So she sat, and she tried to work it out, and the looks that they gave her, the graffiti on her books, the idle slurs made sometimes even by the FMA… and then she curled up tighter.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

The gossip surrounding Hermione's lack of appearance all but ceased when someone unexpected walked slowly through the colossal doors of the Great Hall. Every pair of eyes in the place, even those belonging to ghosts, locked onto the student with the collective pressure of a shotgun blast. Everything was silent, until the new arrival spoke.

"Um… why are you all staring at me like that?"

Harry still wasn't very good at people.

He walked down the length of Gryffindor's table, searching for Ron and finding him being harangued by the FMA as quietly as they could manage. The boy's ears were going red, a sure sign of an oncoming bout of axe murder, and Harry just dropped down beside him.

"Whatever you heard, it isn't true. Harry and I are not dating, nor will we _ever_ be! I like girls, alright, Lavender? Tell her, Harry!" Ron gestured pointedly with a spoon.

The Boy-Who-Lived looked at Lavender. He was very calm. Then again, he was almost always calm to the point of total submission, the only difference in his demeanour coming when he was with Dumbledore talking Potions. His voice was very nearly kind.

"Lavender… I've been ill. What are people saying about me?"

"Well," said Lavender, and launched into a rambling explanation of all the evidence the FMA had gathered that Harry and Ron were dating in secret. She used and named all the sources she and the other Gryffindor girls had pressed for information, backed up argument with facts she thought indisputable, and closed with a resounding speech that could have come straight from the pages of a Desdemona Trillington potboiler. For his part, Harry remained calm, although his eyes slowly crossed underneath his Spellotaped glasses.

"That," he said after Lavender had finally and rather smugly finished, "is a combination of slander, idiocy and complete and utter bullsh-"

"TROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLL!"

Every head snapped around except Harry's, relieved not to be the centre of the FMA's attention.

"TROOOOOOOOLL! IN THE DUNGEON!" Quirrell had a bizarre voice, deep but oddly thin, as if he was only half-saying the words. "Thought you ought to know." He collapsed bonelessly to the floor and then the panic hit.

Ron spun and faced Harry. "Mate, we've got to find Hermione! We have to warn her!"

"Will it hit her, Ron?"

"Of course it will, it's a bleeding _troll_, Harry! They'll crush you with their clubs and eat you, my brothers told me so!"

Harry's face hardened. "I'm coming. Now. Where is she?"

"… Ah. Girls, any ideas?"

"You could try the girl's bathroom on the third floor. FMA, assemble!" The girls snapped to attention and the group ran as fast as they could towards the third floor, Harry only a single step behind Lavender. Despite his scrawny build, he could really run when pressed.

It was something you learned when Uncle Vernon came home of a night, reeking of beer and frustration.

-=Well, this can only end well. Screen Break!=-

They rounded a corner and poured into the girl's bathroom. Hermione was evidently there, squatting on top of a toilet with her head pressed into her arms, and Harry went immediately to her side.

"Hermione… there's a troll on the loose. It isn't safe here, we have to get to the Tower-"

A deep, rumbling roar filled the small bathroom. As one, the group turned their heads slowly towards the sound, fear glinting in their eyes.

"Girls… Harry… Ron… get behind me…" Hermione's voice was small as a newborn mouse, but she didn't need to say it twice. The girls edged behind the bushy-haired girl as the troll sniffed the air, and the boys flanked her. Chivalry was not a word in Ron's personal lexicon, chiefly because he'd never come across it before, but some things you just _did_.

"Now… you all remember the Stunning Charm, yes?"

There was a chorus of murmured yeses. The troll turned towards the clustered students.

"Good. On three, we're going to fire a Stunning Charm all at the same time, and then we are going to scatter. Find cover and fire a spell with every chance you get. One…" The troll's black, deep-set eyes swam with malice. "Two…" It growled long and low, hefting its club up for an overhead swing. "THREE!"

"_**STUPEFY!"**_

Eleven Stunners smacked into the troll's chest, making it pause for a moment as the terrified first-years ran for their lives. Kara and Lavender spun off to the middle of the bathroom, going behind the troll and launching another two Stunners to the back of its head. The troll roared, an earth-shattering punch of a noise, and Hermione, Harry and Ron sent another three spells into the creature's short, bullish neck. The club slammed down towards them, smashing the tiled floor as they dived off to one side, Harry barely moving in time.

"For the record, Hermione, can I just say that this was a REALLY STUPID PLAN!" Jessie Hoxton screamed from underneath a sink. Parvati, her closest FMA member, sent off another neat Stunner that managed to hit the… well… mantroll happy fun time bits. It roared again and charged, pulling a sink off and hurling it out of the way, under a barrage of Stunners from every single member of the FMA. The troll raised the huge club to destroy the prey-

"WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!"

The sink stopped in mid-air, jerked, and accelerated into the back of the troll's head. It shattered on impact, driving inch-thick spikes of sharp porcelain into the monster's brainpan. It staggered backwards, spraying blood from the wounds, and promptly remembered it should be unconscious. Gravity did the rest of the legwork, forcing the creature's limp body down into the floor with a crash of flesh on broken ceramic.

Parvati crawled out from under the bank of sinks, shivering and crying with relief and terror. Ron looked utterly bemused, looking first at himself, then at his wand, then back at himself again.

"Bloody hell, did I really do that?"

"**WHAT IN THE NAME OF MERLIN HAPPENED HERE?"**

-=Another screen break. What is the world coming to?=-

Standing in the doorway was most of the Hogwarts staff, including Cora Granger, holding an evil-looking broadsword with an expression like a demonic bear protecting her cubs.

"Minerva, I think what has happened is that these first years have taken down a fully grown mountain troll. Merlin has even less answers than we do." Albus Dumbledore, wand out and wrapped in a large, multicoloured scarf, dug around in a pocket and extracted a largish paper bag and strode towards the now-huddled Gryffindors, bending down and looking Hermione in the eye.

"Would any of you care for a jelly baby?"

"It was my fault, headmaster! I had a stupid idea that we could stun the troll with stunning charms and maybe run around it and get out of the bathroom and now people have nearly gotten really badly hurt or even killed and it was because of my stupid plan and if it hadn't been for Ron getting it in the back of the head with a sink then I don't know what we'd have done and I, I, I…" Hermione gave up on coherence and slid to the floor from exhaustion. The Headmaster preformed a wandless diagnostic charm on the FMA and the boys, and their wands all showed a mix of Stunners, mispronounced Stunners that had exploded nastily, and in Ron's case a Wingardium Leviosa of some considerable strength.

"Well, I think that was rather comprehensive, don't you, Minerva? Now, I don't see how we can punish them for trying to get out of something like this with their lives. Five points to Gryffindor each for bravery under incredible conditions, with an additional five going to Mr. Weasley for his excellent use of a Levitation Charm. Now, get everyone to the hospital wing, Ioan has returned and we need to capitalise on the current extra pair of hands." Dumbledore summoned up a bevy of stretchers and lowered the worn-out, magically exhausted girls and boys onto them with the aid of some Sleeping Spells and his own Levitators.

Cora Granger walked side by side with her daughter's stretcher, gripping the girl's hand so tightly that her knuckles went white. "You know, that was a really stupid plan. It really needed thinking through. You assumed that a bunch of First-year stunners could get a troll on its back simply because they worked on humans, so you attacked a highly dangerous Dark creature with no thought for your safety. You only did it to protect the people you care about.

"I've never been so proud of you."

**AN: **I would like to apologise for the lateness of this update; I thought I'd posted it ages ago when in fact I had not. Cockballs. Anyway, TheAttentionJustEncouragesHer raises another good point, but to discuss it further would give away what little suspense and plot twistiness I've been able to hammer out, so none of that for you. Work it out yourselves. I love you all.


	16. Rage Against The Machine

**AN:** Another update, another apology for the gap preceding it. Whoa, and ain't this one big as all hell. With regards to the previous reviews, I really appreciate everyone's input. It also sees a brace of new reviewers: Darkness-Lightness (who counts, honest) and penandpencil (who is awesome and should be read. Now. Go on, I'll wait.)

**DISCLAIMER**: I do not own Harry Potter. I own a slightly broken electric guitar, a slightly broken laptop, and a slightly broken self image.

The Hospital Wing had thirteen thousand, four hundred and twenty seven tiles on the ceiling and walls. Each bed had seventy-seven mattress springs, a moderate Impediment Jinx in runic form embedded in each of the seven layers of bedclothes, and one bed had a particularly annoying squeak to it.

What these facts amounted to was the single, overarching truth that Hermione Granger was the most comprehensively bored eleven-year-old in the History of Forever.

After a few hours, she had managed to wriggle her arms free from underneath the layered, too-tight sheets and blankets. She settled down to re-read her Charms text – it felt wrong that she did, considering the book's contents were both faintly patronising and ensconced in her head with the tenacity of a particularly bullish limpet – and muttered a quick Lumos to help her see. Ron gently snored in the background, most of the FMA had passed Madam Pomfrey's daunting medical examination, and Harry… was doing whatever Harry did when he slept. _At least the tightness and charms on the sheets would stop him hurting himself_, she thought. _Honestly, I could kill him for dong that to himself, however counter-productive it might be-_

"Hermione, it's after midnight. You really should be asleep."

"Dad!" Hermione beckoned her father over and, once he had crossed the floor of the Hospital Wing, she held him tight, savouring his scent. It was a peculiar one. He smelled of a little bit of sweat, and a little bit of metal polish, and a little bit of mint from the tube of emergency toothpaste he carried for no adequately explained reason in his top pocket, but most of all he smelled of _Dad_, that peculiar, unknowable but so comfortingly familiar concoction that soothed away all her troubles like a gentle massage.

Then she looked at him, and saw that he had changed.

His skin was slightly pallid. His hair had slightly receded. His eyes had slightly dulled. None of the changes were huge, not in the slightest, but they were there, and Hermione saw them. Ioan seemed to notice her gaze and smiled.

"It's just your poor old dad getting tired and overworked. Nothing to worry about, Mione-chan. Now then, want to tell me why you're here?"

And so, Hermione launched into an engaging, whimsical and utterly false account of a Quidditch player crashing into the stands where she and her friends had been sitting. Her father listened, nodding at the relevant points, and then made to speak.

"Hermione… five points to Gryffindor for masterful creativity in the field of untruths, but I really want to know why it is you are here with your friends instead of, say, Gryffindor Tower. The _true_ version of events will suffice."

Hermione swallowed and looked her father in the eye. "Dad… please don't be angry with me, but…" She then told him the whole story, watching as his face hardened slightly over its course. His eyebrows shot up when the fight with the troll was first mentioned, and as he pressed for details they remained nailed to the top of his forehead. He could barely believe what he was hearing, even though he'd had Poppy bending his and Cora's ear because of it for an hour, after which had been a row between the two women that had led to Dumbledore separating them with some deft spellwork.

"Oh, sweetie, come here…" Ioan pulled his daughter's sheets back so that she could move and hugged her tight. She revelled in the smell of him, the one thing that she hadn't felt was different. It felt right to be there, it felt right to be in his embrace, and she knew he wasn't going to be angry at her.

And she fell asleep in his arms, and he held her until the first few rays of sunlight trickled languorously through the big French windows of the hospital wing, and she felt safer than she had in years.

(Aww. Screen Break!)

When Hermione got awoke, it was sunny out and she realised her clothes had been slept in. Again. This had happened rather too often recently, and she vowed to stay safe. At least until creatures from Tolkien novels stopped trying to kill her while she was supposed to be studying. After a shower that left her at least moderately clean, she journeyed down to great hall for breakfast and a little light reading. This consisted of a weighty tome documenting the life of a fascinating potions expert called Nicholas Flamel, which she thought Harry might like once his glasses got repaired. She read through breakfast, ignoring the gossip surrounding her and the FMA's exploits in the girls' bathroom that fateful day.

It was time for another Defence lesson with Professor Quirrell after that, and this time the spells were a little more interesting. The Fisherman's Hex was one that conjured a large net from the wand tip, and more powerful versions of it were used by Aurors in the capture of Dark wizards and witches. As the Professor yammered on messily about how important it was that they appreciate the fact that the War had passed them by, she saw more and more people turn their heads towards Harry. He cringed and hunched over his textbook, glaring the diagrams for Murmillo's wand movements into submission.

The lessons were beginning to blur into one. Her Charms lessons were by far the easiest, the teacher slinging points her way the gay abandon of a musical character. Potions were a struggle and she knew she'd never be a flier like Ron – being better than Neville was OK for her, although Neville had the aerodynamic qualities of a large digger and about the same ability to stay airborne. Transfiguration was arduous, Astronomy she used largely for naptime, and Herbology was mostly spent trying to stop various bits of wildlife from making Harry's day unpleasant.

He seemed to be improving in Potions. Even Snape had been forced to concede, when the Boy-who-Lived had been on the other side of the room from everyone else and still managed to make a perfect Cooling Salve, that he had at least a small measure of talent. But his confidence was fragile and easy to destroy, as shown by Draco Malfoy with a grin splitting his ivory face one lesson.

Harry had gone up to the front to collect the next batch of ingredients needed for the Swelling Solution they were working on. As he grabbed the various bits and pieces from Snape's cupboard, there was a rather loud explosion from the back of the class. The boy leapt out of his skin and scattered bits of potion ingredient everywhere, and once he'd picked them up a second, rather louder explosion occurred.

Draco Malfoy's influential father let him bargain for prank material with the upper years of Slytherin House. He was rich, and powerful, and everyone knew Malfoys never forgot a favour. It had been derisively easy to brew up a deliberately unstable potion, bottle it in a vial charmed with Sonorus, clone it a few times with a Fifth Year's Germinio, and wait until the next Potions lesson. Snape whipped around, eyes searching for the culprit as Harry slowly went rigid under the Professor's desk. He was completely catatonic when a powerful, greasy-smelling hand grabbed him by the hair and yanked him out sharply.

"Is this your idea of a joke, boy? That you'd drop some sort of portable firework and disrupt my classroom?"

Harry was silent, fear paralyzing him. In the seat next to where his had been, Hermione was emitting a low growl that made everyone in the FMA behind her rather nervous.

"You dare mock me? You DARE?" Snape all but threw him to the door. "Get out of this classroom, you insolent little brat! You will receive failure grades on every single potion you make for the rest of the term, you will serve detention with me for a month, and I will take fifty points from Gryffindor, now get. Out. Of. My. **SIGHT!**"

Eyes wide with fear, Harry remained rooted to the spot.

"Well, boy? Why aren't you moving? Another ten points from Gryffindor!"

"S-s-s-sir, please… it, it's Hermione… she looks really scary and she's coming this way."

"The Mudblood can do what she likes. I assure you, she will be punished later. Separately from you, whelp. Now leave this place before I Banish you through every wall until you reach Gryffindor tower-"

"FMA. One out."

"All out," chorused the rest of the Association. Hermione led them to the central corridor and began to give orders in a loud, clear voice that burned with rage.

"Tight formation. Tuck in behind me and move at my speed exactly. Lavender, come up the front with me. We are going to leave now."

The girls linked arms across the shoulders and those behind Hermione and Lavender hooked their outside arms onto the shoulders of the girls in front. The Muggleborn children in the class were reminded faintly of a rugby scrum, only this was a column and not composed of giant men with uncertain sexualities.

"Right. On three, just like Lavender and Parvati made you practice. THREE!"

The FMA charged. They moved almost as one, in step, accelerating to a hard canter. Snape was completely bemused, and leapt out of the way as the girls charged out of the classroom, Hermione grabbing Harry's hand and leading him off back to the common room. The teacher stared out of the door as the girls tramped off in perfect step, even mounting stairs without difficulty. Then he turned back inside.

"Well? What are you all staring at?"

Ron raised his hand. "Um… that, Professor?"

"Twenty points from Gryffindor. Now continue with your work."

(Oh noez! What can we do to save Hermione? I know! A screen break!)

"My God, Hermione… You do realise what you've done, right? That you've put the kibosh on almost every magical career going in one fell swoop? All those jobs, and those of your friends, it's all gone because of one little boy?"

"Dad, Harry is _not_ just one little boy, he saved the entire Wizarding World from a Dark Lord. That teacher was emotionally abusing him. I had to stick up for him. Otherwise no-one would have-"

"Hold on, hold on… saved the world. He's eleven, Hermione! And a scrawny eleven at that! You don't seriously expect me to believe that he's already saved the world, do you? Because I didn't raise you to tell lies."

"It's true, Ioan." Cora walked in and put her arms around her daughter, nuzzling the girl's neck beneath its nuclear haystack of hair. "Harry Potter saved the world when he was little more than a babe in arms. And what did he get for it? Nothing but torture, ten solid years of torture with a family that hated and abused him… oh, Hermione, I'm sorry, don't cry, please don't cry…"

Cora's entreaties failed, and her daughter broke upon her shoulder. Meanwhile, Ioan Granger fumed silently in the corner – not at his girl, no, how could he? – but at the villains who had destroyed an innocent. He knew what it felt like to have to deal with that; he'd been an NHS dentist near a council estate in Salford, he'd seen kids show up with broken teeth from supposed playground fights. He'd seen the fear.

If Harry Potter had it as bad as his sobbing daughter and soggy wife made out, he needed help.

"Cora, I'm going to go and speak to Professor Dumbledore about setting up a self-study group for first year potions, perhaps under Madam Pomfrey. I will not have my girl hurt."

Cora looked up at him. "Me or Hermione?"

Ioan's eyes hardened. "Yes." Then he turned and stalked off towards Dumbledore's office, the unfamiliar pale Healer's robes flapping about him as he went.

Cora just held her child, until Harry walked in.

"Um… Madam Granger?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"Can… can I have one of those?"

The Healer looked at him, then at her daughter, then at him again. "Of course you can. C'mere."

And he did, and the hugs made them safer than any charm, until they were let go into the world again.


	17. Desires And Demons

**AN**: By the time you read this, there will likely have been a massive gap. I apologise for being such a humongous arse on this score, but I'm just feeling… listless. Like there's nothing I can do, and there's no point to me trying. Anyway, new reviews from QuestSeeker and Jim Red Hawk, who had praise and interesting notifications on Hermione's karate style respectively, so thank you both very much. I do read them and they make me feel wanted.

**DISCLAIMER**: I am not JK. I am neither a successful Scotswoman, nor am I someone famous for making dance music and wearing a variety of stupid hats.

"Professor Dumbledore, I would like to put a suggestion to you. No, I would not like a lemon drop, thank you for offering; you're speaking to a dentist. Look, I would like to set up a study group for Potions with, perhaps, Madam Pomfrey supervising? When would this happen? Oh, during first year Potions, of course. Because not everybody in that class is as strong as my daughter… actually, I would go so far as to say that nobody is, even in the upper years. Yes, I understand that Professor Snape is a teacher here and that he has doubtless performed you some great and noble service that causes you to overlook blatant emotional abuse and favouritism. Actually, Headmaster, I will take that tone with you. My voice is calm, but I am not."

Cora had to suppress a snigger at that point. Not that her husband would have heard. She was two rooms over, working on a stock of Blood Replenisher and Skele-gro for the Hospital Wing. She hacked away at some love-lies-weeping and was about to bung it in the cauldron when a hand stopped her.

It was a small hand. "Um. It works better if you use a little bag, Mrs. Granger. The love-lies-weeping needs to infuse through the brew, like with a, um, a teabag… here, let me show you." She was gently guided away and the hand produced a small bag made of some kind of mesh. The diced plant was scraped into it and the owner of the hands popped it into the potion as normal. _Heh, how soon we consider things normal._ "Chiron Rhazes postulates that it should aid recovery time by almost ten per cent in New Potioneer. Um. I'm sorry for asking for that hug, it wasn't right."

There was a gooey noise, which punctuated the silence. A clock ticked. Some birds flew past the window.

"Harry, you never, ever have to apologise for the way that those people made you. It wasn't your fault."

Harry paused, and looked at his shoes. "I have to get to class. Charms. Hermione's coming too, so I'll be OK." He didn't wait for an answer before running from the room, a battered-looking rucksack slung over his thin-looking, sharp-boned shoulder. He was still under five stone and his hair was, whilst now well-scrubbed, still dead-looking. She was glad that he had a friend, but she just wished he had had a happier life.

He'd saved the world. He didn't deserve this.

(Sadface-induced Screen Break)

Harry did not have Charms.

Neither did Hermione, though, which was good. What was also good was that girls could come into the boys' dormitories (although the other way around was strictly forbidden via school rules and a trick staircase) when the other Gryffindor boys were in the common room watching Fred and George Weasley attempting some sort of gooey grey potion that belched green gas at irregular intervals. It was apparently meant for the Slytherin Quidditch team's showers. Hermione thoroughly approved.

The reason for the prank, and the reason why Harry Potter had become progressively more withdrawn since the troll attack – despite being a hero to even the older Gryffindors – was one Draco Malfoy. Heremione had been able to wheedle out of Harry that the blond and his pet boulders, Crabbe and Goyle, had cornered him in a corridor and pelted him with Stinging Hexes until they'd heard someone coming. That had been two days ago, and the skin on his chest and back was still red raw. Hermione owed them a kicking, but instead decided to help Harry with his Transfiguration essay.

After battling through a textbook together and scribbling down something close to an answer with the scratchy quills – Hermione wished to the various gods whose followers her mother had psychologically scarred over the years that someone in the Wizarding World would hurry up and invent a damn magic biro – they had sat down with some chocolate and he'd tried to explain the latest predicament. Hermione was a sort of guardian angel to him, and the two children were as close as siblings. Ron wandered in eventually too, although that was largely because McGonagall had given his brothers a large stretch of detentions for the potion blowing a hole in her office wall. The three of them blethered on about the respective merits of football, hockey and Quidditch for a good long time, and it allowed Hermione to do a little bit of thinking about Ron.

There was something fundamentally likeable about Ron, Hermione decided. He could be impossibly stupid at times – she remembered an incident when his Astronomy homework had proclaimed that the largest of the four moons of Jupiter was Gallifrey – but he was, on some kind of subconscious level, completely at home with the girls of the FMA. He was the ultimate face in the pub, as her father put it; you knew him on sight, and you knew you could talk to him. According to Lavender, who had whispered it to her at the dinner table in a voice loud enough to bounce off walls in Stockholm, this made him an honorary girl. Ron had nearly suffocated, and most of Gryffindor was paralysed with laughter whenever they saw him for the rest of the week.

He'd forgiven them almost instantaneously, just like he forgave… well, everyone, really. The youngest of the male Weasleys had even offered an olive branch to Seamus Finnegan, who had gladly accepted in the hopes of getting some juicy inside information on the "greatest love story Hogwarts had ever known", as he'd put it before the resultant good-natured punch from Hermione had loosened several of his teeth. When presented with the various issues of living in Hogwarts, he'd just smiled and gotten on with it, until Harry produced a handwritten note from a pocket.

Then he had punched a wall.

Hermione snatched up the leaflet from the ground. "'The Freak Who Lived is cordially invited to meet Messrs Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle at midnight on the third floor corridor. He is to come alone, and he is to duel Mr Malfoy at magic, and he is to hope that Mr Malfoy goes easy on his prissy little arse and merely spanks him once he is finished. If, however, Mr Potter do not turn up to have some respect for his betters instilled into him at wandpoint, things will get worse for him. Signed, Your Superiors, Slytherin House.' Harry, you can't be thinking of going through with this? It's a trick!" Ron hopped around in the background, swearing softly and prodigiously under his breath and flailing his hand around limply.

"What can I do, though… if I don't go then he'll hurt me again. I thought people weren't supposed to hit in the magic world, but he does, and what am I doing that's wrong, Hermione?" Harry was all but wailing that last sentence. Ron looked, if possible, even more murderous, and then he began to speak.

"I reckon he should go, Hermione. Just… he shouldn't go alone."

"But the note said-"

"Harry, mate, it's three on one. They'll cheat, and they'll beat the hell out of you, and that's if they even show up."

"… but pain is what freaks deserve…"

_Oh bloody, bloody, BLOODY hell. I am going to organise a visit to Azkaban when those bastard Dursleys are sent down, and I am going to break them and feed them to the Dementors inch by bastard inch._

"You're not a freak, Harry. You're brilliant. And we're all going."

"If… if you all go, and they're there, and you beat them… will it stop?"

"Well, um, I don't know this is Malfoy we're talking about-GNEEEGH!" Hermione had been practicing elbow strikes, and her natural wiriness leant her sharply-defined bones. Ron went green, and decided it just wasn't his day.

"Of course it will, Harry. Once they wake up after we've beaten them, they won't hurt you ever again. Bullies don't bully once they've been stood up to properly, Mum always says so."

"Then let's do it. We've got the cloak, we can make our way down there unseen, like we did before."

"I'm in," said Ron, with a determined look on his face that would have sent a few Gryffindor girls into paroxysms of glee and forced them to spend some time with Desdemona Trillington's latest saccharine regurgitations.

"Well then," Hermione grinned, "tonight they dine in hell."

"Dinner's way before midnight, Hermione, don't be daft-"

"Do you want another elbow, Ronald Weasley?"

"No Miss Granger sorry Miss Granger I'll be good please don't give me another elbow."

(Abandon screen! Abandon screen! Make way for Screen Break! Awooga! Awooga!)

The trio crept down into the Common Room that night, Harry's cloak swirling up and over them as they exchanged greetings. Quiet as mice they crept out of the portrait hole and down to the third floor corridor, and there to greet them was none other than-

"It's Malfoy… and he's got Filch with him," Hermione breathed. The other's barely could at all. "There's a door in that recess, make for it. Quietly."

"We know, Hermione, we're not stupid – not the elbow, not the elbow!"

"Don't hit him again, Hermione. Don't hit." Harry had all but frozen up, a slight quiver to his shoulders the only physical indicator he was still alive. "Please don't hit. It hurts."

She knew what he meant.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I'm sorry to Ron, too. Come on, let's get in that door."

They scuttled through the door, a creak that was deafening to their terror-heightened senses echoing through the corridor as they closed it. As one, they threw the cloak off, Hermione balling it up and passing it to Harry as they turned. Ron was already facing it, jaw wide open as if someone had shoved a car jack in it. They soon understood why.

Standing before them was a gigantic mirror. It was at least fifteen feet tall, and that was discounting all the golden edging and decoration – which was in sufficient quantity to make the average gangsta rapper deem it a bit gaudy, though none of the assembled wizards and witch had any way of knowing that. Hermione opened her mouth, thought for a moment, and closed it again. There weren't words.

Filch was dragging Malfoy off to his office, shouting something about wasting his time, but the trio paid him no heed. Hermione stepped forward, her body taut as a bowstring and ready to explode into motion if the mirror so much as breathed wrong. Which it couldn't, what with it being a mirror and therefore not in possession of lungs, but that is beside the point…

The witch looked into the Mirror of Erised, as the baroque inscription on the supports read, and saw herself. She was seventeen, beautiful, and holding a long, gently curving sword in one hand and her tiger-striped wand. Her hair had been tamed into a slickly glossy ponytail – no samurai bore her current explosive frizz – and the rose design on the breast of her keikogi marked her as a master, and it matched the trellises and beds full of roses that surrounded her. Her parents were both looking on, smiling and proud, and Harry and Ron were both strong-looking and brave. The FMA were there too, all bearing a martial artist's poise and black belts in Shotokai karate.

All things considered, the colour took a long time to drain from Hermione Granger's face.

"What is it, 'Mione? What do you see?"

"I see… us. But more so. I'm a master, you're strong, and Harry's healed…"

"I don't. This is weird. There's pink flower petals falling around me, but I'm on what looks like a heather field. You're all there. I'm… I'm holding the Quidditch Cup – and the House Cup too – and, and there's a badge on my chest, for Head…" Ron's voice trailed off, but rallied after a little while. "Harry, mate, come here, what do you see?"

The tiny, skinny boy shuffled over silently, and looked.

"There's a garden. Lilies… and my parents are there. My real ones. There're high walls, and I don't have any scars. I'm normal and safe… I'm not a freak any more."

It was all Hermione could do to suppress the squeak of pain in her throat. "We'd better get back to the Tower; Percy might've noticed we were gone. You know how he loves to prowl about of a night."

The mirror seemed to watch them go, the soft light from the corridor making its gilding glitter in farewell before the door shut and left it in darkness again.

**AN:** Well, this was a bastard to write. A thousand apologies. For hints to what Ron saw, I suggest you Google flower symbolism and proceed to think laterally about it. Thank you for putting up with the unpredictable update schedule, and check out The Forest Suite if you have the time – which you almost certainly do, because it's only two chapters…


	18. A Joyous Absence Of Bloody Slade

**AN: **Jesus God, it's been a whole month-and-a-bit since I last updated this thing. Sorry about that. Anyway, there are new reviews from QuestSeeker (thank you for the praise) and MariusDarkwolf (thank you for letting me write the first two chapters of an entirely different story with you, based on the Actionverse… sort of). On the subject of Mr. Darkwolf, go and check out his stuff in the lengthy pauses betwixt my own updates. It rocks my tiny Kentish socks.

**DISCLAIMER: **Prose for the Prose God! Fanfics for the Throne of Rowling!

Christmas was coming. Whilst the goose may or may not have been getting fat, Hermione Granger was making sure that the FMA didn't. They battered through the snow at pace, Hermione and Lavender leading the charge to the Herbology greenhouses; they were considerably further away than the lake, and the girls were fit enough now to run all the way even in the disgusting conditions of a Scottish winter. The girls were also learning that new phrases, like "wilderness survival exercise" and "7th of January crackdown", made Hermione grin in a rather unnerving way.

Harry had not got fat, of course. If anything, the huge plates of food that typified a Hogwarts Christmas had made him eat even less. Usually, the only time he'd seen plates stacked so high with food were Dudley's birthday parties, and those had a whole different set of bad memories, nightmares and suchlike attached to them. As the Dursley inquest continued, the Headmaster's use of… not quite illegal, but certainly frowned-upon blood wards and related spells had come to light. It was those, apparently, that had manipulated the memories of the various frontline staff of Greater Whinging Social Services into thinking that everything was fine, and that they had no need to come back there. That was the thing about blood magic. It was strong, hideously so, but ill-suited to lateral thinking, as it were.

All of this had been relayed to the boy by his best friend through a small haze of half-chewed toast crumbs. Ron Weasley had sent word to his family back at the Burrow that he would be staying at Hogwarts over Christmas. They were used to this from their other sons, of course – Percy stayed on because he was a Prefect, and the twins stayed on largely to annoy him – but they sent back a huge body of presents that meant Errol, their elderly post owl, had had to spend three weeks resting up for the return journey on a diet of bacon and shrews.

In all, the three of them would all be in the castle for Christmas Day. This was good; it allowed them to catch up on Potions, or rather for Harry to help the others catch up on the Potions they'd missed, under the hawk-like gaze of Madam Pomfrey and Cora Granger. Ioan had volunteered to hold the fort at their Muggle practise down in London, to the chagrin of his wife. She acknowledged it had to be done, though; the magical world couldn't cater to every demand, especially not those of a rabid anime fan and Pocky addict, and buying them necessitated a Muggle income. The exchange rate between Galleons and pounds sterling was tightly control by the devious little goblins of Gringotts and various Muggle front companies in a manner only of interest to Friedmanist monetarists and Bernard Madoff, who operated on similar principles. So I'll shut up about it and move on to Crimbo proper.

(Screen Break, otherwise y'all are gonna murder me)

"Harry Harry Harry wake up wake up it's CHRISTMAAAAAAAS!"

Harry Potter shot out from his bed and made for the bathroom, where he threw some water at his face and hands before sprinting down towards the kitchen and promptly remembering where he was. This was Hogwarts. The speaker was a particularly bouncy Ron. There were no chores, no beatings, no… worse things. Harry smiled to himself.

Best. Present. Ever.

He made his way back to the dorm and pulled on a knackered-looking red cable-knit jumper and jeans apparently meant for something much larger, like a healthy young killer whale. Ron was already wearing a maroon jumper with an R on it, apparently in case of sudden, laser-guided amnesia, and he was stumbling towards the door still pulling on some of his few non-school robes. The ginger boy wondered idly about how his best friend could make everything he wore look baggy, even the deliberately tight grey uniform jumpers Hogwarts saw fit to issue to the student body. It didn't really matter; the pair of them still made for the common room where Hermione, Cora and a few FMA members were assembled.

"Thank God you're here, boys. Can we open the presents now, Mum?"

"Dive right-" Cora was silenced by the stampeding first-years bearing down on the Christmas tree. "In. And read the labels, everyone, it's just polite!" She was wearing a long, fluffy pink dressing gown, a towel wrapped around her hair (save for a few wet rat-tails that clung to the side of her face) and a huge grin. Cora's family was a big one, and the sight of all the children ripping into their presents reminded her of those beautiful yesterdays.

She only wished her husband could see it too.

Hermione deftly shucked yet another book from its packaging, this one a tome on evolutionary theory that looked like it could be used to beat cows to death with, and looked over at Harry. The boy was holding a fleecy cardigan made of some faintly iridescent green fur with a gold H embroidered on the chest. Tears formed at the corners of his eyes behind his milk-bottle glasses when he felt two hands on him, one on each of his shoulders.

"Hey, looks like you've got-"

"A bona-fide Weasley jumper."

Ron joined the twins and gave his best friend a quick hug he imagined was manly. "You're one of us now, mate. Now come on, that one looks interesting. Hermione, get over here, this one's from me…" The kids bustled about in a small cyclone of brown paper, which Fred and George occasionally charmed to fly at Percy while he lounged artlessly on a sofa and revised for his OWLs.

Eventually, Christmas lunch was served, with great fanfare and rejoicing from the Weasleys' contingent of seasoned gourmands. At the staff table, Cora was treated to the sight of Professor Snape trying to look menacing from underneath a multicoloured beanie with a propeller on the top, gently spinning in the breeze. She slipped a note under the table to Professor Flitwick, who read it, grinned like a maniac, and wandlessly cast a Sticking Charm upon the cracker hat. The resultant howls of impotent rage as Severus fought tooth and nail with his own headgear made the meal much jollier, and Dumbledore nearly fell off his chair laughing as the Potions master eventually decided to remove the hat via a muttered Incendio and a swift Flame-Freezing Charm to get rid of it. From somewhere else in the Great Hall, a flashbulb popped.

By Boxing Day, Snape was stalking the halls of the school with mountains of ripped posters under his arm. They all showed a single image; a greasy-haired, hook-nosed man wearing a burning Muggle child's hat, face a mask of pure hatred as the melting propeller on top twirled gently amidst the flames.

(Five points from Gryffindor for not having put in a screen break in some time…)

Hogwarts over Christmas was idyllic, but that didn't mean that everything went according to plan. For instance, the gamekeeper had damned nearly been forced out of his job after it transpired that his hut was also home to a young female dragon. The dragon herself was taken away by one of Ron's older brothers – a seventh-year or two could be seen mooning at him for the entirety of his stay, for beneath the largely superficial burn scars and loose-fitting armoured overalls he was not unattractive – to be housed in Romania as part of a breeding program. It had been forgotten over the course of the holiday.

Eventually, Ioan arrived at the school. He had apparently trudged up from the Grangers' Hogsmeade flat, unsure as to whether even his indestructible Volvo would work on the grounds of Hogwarts. As it was, he was soundly glomped by both his wife and daughter at the same time, and the three of them fell into a snowdrift. Laughing, they made their way back into the castle. Harry was there to meet them, having asked to help the house-elves with the Sunday roast they'd been preparing. He greeted Ioan warmly, and without a trace of the fear he usually showed the world in general and adult men in particular. Indeed, it sounded like the boy was declaiming Shakespeare. This struck Cora as profoundly odd, and deserving of further investigation, but she said nothing at the time. She needed to talk to her husband, and quickly.

The resultant conversation, when it happened after dark in the staff common room and smoking area, went like this:

"Ioan… we really have to talk." The man cringed; he, like everyone in a relationship, knew instinctively that the other party going 'We need to talk' meant that you'd buggered up profoundly and needed to grovel, or at least look like you were doing so.

"What about?" Never a good thing to say in a scenario like this.

"What about, Ioan? I'm not sure. Could it be that you've been up at the practice every single day?"

"Well, someone has to keep it running. We have to keep our heads above water, for Hermione's sake, like we agreed-"

"Well, just in case it has escaped your memory, we _agreed_ to share it between us! Hermione needs both her parents here, Ioan. And… and I think she loves you more than she loves me, and I don't know why."

"Oh, Cora, pet, you know that's not true."

"But I don't. That's just it, Ioan, I _don't_ know it isn't true any more. And you would be able to see that if you were _here_!" Cora's voice was rising, that last word almost wailed at her husband. He stepped back to preserve his eardrums. "I know she's always been a bit of a daddy's girl, I'm not stupid, and that's the problem! Your not being here hurts her, Ioan. You are _never here_!"

"Cora, that's just not fair. I've come down from London to see you-"

"Once, Ioan. You came down bloody _once_. And I checked with Marius at reception, you only did that because you'd had a cancellation. Why does your family come second now, Ioan? Why don't we matter to you any more?"

"Now you're just being ridiculous-"

"Ridiculous? You missed _Christmas_, Ioan! We've always made sure that Christmas is free, even from the NHS outsourcing stuff, and this year you just didn't bother! What the hell is wrong with you-"

"I'M TRYING TO PROVIDE FOR THIS FAMILY WHILE YOU PISS ABOUT WITH HERBAL REMEDIES, THAT'S WHAT'S FUCKING WRONG WITH ME!" Cora was stunned, rooted to the spot, unable to breathe, let alone speak. "I WASN'T AWARE THAT SCRAPING TOGETHER ENOUGH FUNDING TO SEND OUR DAUGHTER OFF TO UNIVERSITY WITHOUT THE DEBTS WE HAD TO PAY OFF WAS A CHARACTER FLAW!"

Ioan Granger had, in Cora's experience, shouted like that only once in his entire life. Then, it had been at a primary school headmistress who had tried to suspend Hermione for, as he had put it, having the temerity to hurt the feelings of the poor ickle school bully. Now, Cora was the target, and a cold sweat broke out in the small of her back. Her fight or flight instincts were clanging like church bells and the former wasn't an option; Ioan had beaten a fifth-degree hapkido master from Cora's own style without breaking a sweat.

His face… God, his face was almost unrecognisable. It was twisted with rage, cold and unforgiving as Arctic tundra. The grey of his eyes looked like arrowheads, hard and deadly and pointed at her.

"Ioan," she managed in a voice so miniscule and hoarse it put her in mind of one of Harry's worse days, "Ioan, you're scaring me."

And like a summer storm, the anger in him left as swiftly as it came. His face became the one Cora loved again. Didn't it? It had softened, certainly, but that hardness… moods like that didn't just go away. His hair seemed thinner, too, which was really strange. Cora put it down to the castle's magic; it had been used for hundreds of years, she reasoned to herself, there must be a background magical field lurking in it. Like with Chernobyl, only more dangerous.

"Cora… I'm sorry, I should go…"

Now she could move, and so she turned away from him. "I think so too, Ioan. I'll… I'll stay here tonight."

And Ioan walked away, head bowed, and Cora slumped bonelessly into a battered old armchair, and she stayed there until four in the morning when she told a ghost choir wandering the halls to piss off. And then she went to bed, and didn't get up until mid-afternoon, and only showed her face after she was sure the redness of her eyes had been covered up by her foundation.

At dinner, she'd laughed at the dismal jokes of the Headmaster and laughed more at the perfectly-rolled eyes of Professor McGonagall. She'd smiled at Hermione, and sat playing wizard chess with Ron, and idly wondered if Harry had been doing the exact same thing. Then she realised he'd been doing it since Christmas, and the bottom dropped out of her world.

It was then that Hagrid burst into the dining hall and told the rest of the staff that he'd found a freshly-dead unicorn in the Forest the night. It had apparently been drained of all its blood.

Cora was a naturally intelligent and inquisitive woman. She'd seen a treatise on unicorns in one of the Healer trade magazines Madam Pomfrey received every Thursday, and remembered that the blood had healing powers beyond pretty much everything known to the wizarding world. The author had said that some would consider the curse of bad luck that it brought upon the drinker very much worth it, and that it could almost bring the dead back to a kind of cursed half-life.

She hadn't been aware that the bottom could drop out of one's world twice in one evening.

**AN #2: **Boy howdy, have I got some explaining to do. For starters, I had no idea this chapter would take so long. And I apologise for that profusely. In the mean time, I hope you read Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, which is epic in ways I cannot even begin to describe, much less emulate, and also the works of Undocumented Features, which is quite rubbish at the start but grows into something spectacular.

Right, that's that sorted out. Next update will… well, let's shoot for two in one month, eh? Otherwise this fic won't be finished until bloody Doomsday…


	19. BONUS LONG: Cause And Effect

**AN: **You know how I said about this was gonna be my second update in the space of a month? Well, let's hope this prediction turns out right. I'm over the worst of the writer's block and I know vaguely what happens in this chapter, which has very rarely happened before. New review from Fumes43 (who has work you should check out because it rocks), and a shout-out from my new collaborator MariusDarkwolf (who has work you should check out because I sometimes shout at him until he lets me scribble things at it).

This chapter soundtracked by Elbow's new album "Build A Rocket Boys!", which you should also check out because it's just gorgeous and spectacular and Insert Positive Superlative Here.

**DISCLAIMER: **Tyler Durden? Rowling's alter ego. Do not piss her off, or she will blow you to kingdom come.

**OTHER, MORE IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:-**

_**THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS A WHOLE BUNCH OF TRIGGER WARNINGS; BASICALLY, EVERYTHING MY VERSION OF THE DURSLEYS DID TO HARRY IS TOUCHED ON HERE. VIEWERS OF A SENSITIVE DISPOSITION MAY CONSIDER THEMSELVES HEARTILY WARNED. BECAUSE BLOODY HELLFIRE, THIS IS GONNA BE HARD.**_

"… and that's when the dragon set Mrs. Norris on fire."

Most of the people in the Gryffindor common room laughed like a pack of hyenas. Seamus Finnegan had been given a script for the returning students to enlighten them as to the events of Christmas, and had treated it less like a list of facts than a springboard for some traditional Irish creativity, which was a nice way of saying he'd lost the parchment about five minutes after the single read-through he'd bothered with and was spouting half-remembered bullshit at nineteen to the dozen. Still, it was funny and salacious and that was what mattered. Nobody called out Desdemona Trillington for her inability to form a decently-constructed sentence, although it was Hermione's considered opinion that someone should. Soon. With a claw hammer.

That had been a weird Christmas present.

Still, she thought, at least Harry's getting better. Everything's going to be alright; the Prophet's calling for the Dursleys to be sent to Azkaban and have their deranged husk-like bodies dragged through Diagon Alley every six months for people to throw hexes and/or pointy rocks at, and it looks as if Minister Fudge will listen to popular opinion. Snape can't hurt him. You-Know-Who's too _dead_ to hurt him. He's safe now.

Ron tapped her on the shoulder and proffered a Butterbeer. "I wonder if Seamus'll ever stop talking. He sounds like Lee Jordan on a sugar rush." Hermione giggled; the young Irishman had run out of stuff even vaguely connected with the truth and was now in the middle of an outrageous fabrication involving the giant squid and a Ravenclaw sixth-year from Japan. She briefly wondered what wizarding law had to say about slander… probably not much more than 'if you're going to hex them, at least leave them as something we can recognise without wincing'.

About fifteen minutes later, Harry got back from a meeting with his Mind-Healer and was treated like a conquering hero. This was in large part due to Seamus' insistence that Harry had forced Professor Snape to not only wear a rather silly hat, but had later glued it to his head and set it on fire. Despite his most vehement denials, the crowd carried him on the shoulders of a gigantic seventh-year called Oltonhall and forced him to eat what felt like nine times his own weight in congratulatory snack treats. Hermione thought he was finally learning to enjoy himself; but there was something odd about it all. Something was wrong.

And then she realised nothing was wrong, and _that_ was what was wrong.

Eventually, laughing and even trading the odd impromptu joke with Brigstocke in fifth-year, Harry retired to bed. Hermione followed him with her eyes, then grabbed Ron as (once Harry had left the sightline of everyone but her, a fortunate quirk of the seating arrangements) the Boy-Who-Lived bolted like a scared rabbit for the toilets next to the staircase. They followed him, exactly the same thought running through their heads.

"Ron, I can't go in there. Go to him."

He didn't need to be told twice.

(Screen break. This section deals with the previously mentioned _**HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE THINGS**_, so there isn't a joke here. That would be just… wrong.)

Ron crept into the boys' toilets and stopped dead. There was Harry, kneeling on the slightly damp tiled floor with half of his body obscured by the cubicle's MDF wall. Ron couldn't see his head, but the sounds of retching were unmistakeable to anyone who'd ever been around Fred and George when a test potion went wrong. He drew the obvious conclusion and edged forward, eventually sneaking into the cubicle next to Harry's and sitting down on the seat.

"Bad Butterbeer, mate?" As lies went, it was sufficiently blatant to warrant its own eight-foot neon sign, but it was supposed to be. Harry latched onto it like a limpet.

"S-sorry… freak's been bad again, hasn't it? It needs to be punished again."

"No, Harry, you're not a-"

But Harry had already picked himself up and positioned himself against the wall, head down, legs splayed, robes, too-big jeans and underwear next to him. Ron simply stared. What else could he do but stare?

There were scars. Harry's thighs and buttocks were covered in scars, some deep red lines with ragged edges, some the small craters of cigar burns, some were ugly crescents that looked like nail marks, still more just the thin, shallow lines that reminded Ron of where his father had cut himself on a sharp piece of metal. They were innumerable. In places they blended into one mass of dead tissue and nightmares.

"… Please, don't make it hurt too badly, sir. Please don't hurt me badly."

There was a crunch as Ron drove his fist through the cubicle wall. Ragged splinters of fibreboard cut into his knuckles, but his hand was clenched so hard there was barely any blood. Then he got up, and it took all his willpower not to throw up or burst into tears.

"Harry… Merlin…"

Those were the only sounds for a while, aside from the gurgling of plumbing and occasional snatches of conversation from the Common Room. Silence is harder to find that people think.

"You're not going t-to punish me?"

"No, Harry, never, I'm never gonna hurt you…" Ron's efforts were failing; his vision was blurring and there was a weird, falling feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was more to this. There was so much pain in that tiny body of his best friend's, pain that bred in his soul like a black fungus and craved more like itself. Some more time passed after that.

Eventually, Ron walked over to Harry and helped him put his clothes back on. He wiped the strings of sick from the boy's front as best he could, and then he took hold of him in his arms and sat down on the floor with him.

Harry's breathing started to go ragged as he told his story. His voice was the strange thing. Years ago, Ron had been to the Ministry with his father and seen a man shuffling out of one of the lifts, grey-faced and blank-eyed. Arthur had told him that he'd been given the Dementor's Kiss for killing three Muggles during the War. The man had spoken like Harry did now. His voice wasn't just dead, it was _empty_, like someone had sucked the life out of his young body.

And the things he said, for what felt like forever, in a tone as slow and deliberate as the footsteps of a dying soldier, left the blood cold in Ron Weasley's veins.

Vernon hadn't started it. It had been Petunia who had first knocked the four-year-old boy to the ground with a blow to the chest. After that, the floodgates had opened. If he did something wrong, he was beaten savagely. First just with slaps and fists, then it escalated. Apparently, he hadn't 'got the message'. He was still 'being freakish', only now he was doing it deliberately. On his fifth birthday, his aunt and uncle had stripped him, lashed him to the worktable in the basement of their home, and burned him with candles and cigarettes.

After that, Harry's story got stranger. Darker. They stopped feeding him; when they caught him stealing from the fridge, Uncle Vernon force-fed him dog food until he almost drowned. They'd never bothered to toilet train him, instead just hurling him into the cupboard under the stairs when he made a mess and locking him there for days at a time. Harry had learned not to bother screaming or crying for help. The only people that showed up were Vernon and Petunia, and they beat him for it. No-one else cared or mourned.

One summer they had dog-sat for Aunt Marge whilst she went on a cruise. Petunia had used this to her advantage, throwing the huge mastiff's wastes in the cupboard and letting it bite the boy who lived in it. Vernon occasionally had Harry muck out the cupboard naked, but only when Petunia had guests coming over. Nobody ever looked in the cupboard.

Dudley, by this point, was fat enough to sit on Harry and hold him down with weight alone and malevolent enough to know his parents applauded him for making the freak do weird things. It had been his idea, after the one school science lesson he'd actually paid attention to, to make Harry clean the toilets with bleach and ammonia; the mixture was one of the reasons why the shivering wreck in Ron's arms spoke so quietly. Harry's cousin had taken the greatest pleasure in watching the boy vomit. He loved to rub the boy's face in it until the glasses broke and the shards dug into his skin.

It continued; the Dursleys' humiliations coming faster and faster out of Harry's mouth until they threatened to drown Ron in their evil words, the wanton destruction of a little boy making his friend want to be sick. The end came soon, and it was what Ron had been scared of hearing the most.

For the last six months of his time in Little Whinging before Rubeus Hagrid had battered down the door screaming blue murder and leading a squad of Aurors, Vernon had raped him. Sometimes alone, sometimes with Petunia joining in, forcing him to do things no ten year old should have to even think about, let alone understand.

He had only started crying when the end came, and Hagrid had taken him away.

And Ron had started too, silent tears damping the back of Harry's robes as the boy shuddered in his embrace. He had no idea what to do. The adults, the teachers… they couldn't know. They'd take him away and put him in St Mungo's forever, and he'd never see his friend again. No, Ron reasoned, they'd have to keep it between themselves.

"Harry… do you want to go upstairs?" His eyes were red-rimmed and still streaming tears, but Harry managed a weak nod. "Do you need help getting there?" A pause, a shuddering pause that made Ron certain he'd said the wrong thing, as usual… and then another weak nod. "Come on then. You're safe here. They… they won't ever hurt you again, Harry, I promise you they won't ever hurt you."

Ron knew, deep down, that he really couldn't make that promise. There were too many options; they might be kept around for the blood-magic wards that had kept him free from wizarding influence for ten years, they might not be sent to Azkaban, they might even manage to escape somehow and come to destroy him again like demons in the night. But as he saw Harry curl up on the four-poster bed, he realised something. It was the only thing that had really worked.

And it scared him.

(OK, the horror has passed. You can look now. Screen break)

The next morning, when the FMA returned from their now much longer morning run (as evidenced by the number of crimson-faced, wheezing Gryffindors was higher than usual), Harry took Hermione to one side at the breakfast table. Ron followed, eyes constantly mobile for anything that might spook or hurt his best friend.

"Hermione, tonight, I want to go to the mirror again."

"The mirror? What do you – oh, that mirror! I've been doing some research on that, actually, in between lessons, and-"

"Can we go tonight?" Hermione stopped, and looked at him. His eyes were still red from the previous night, and something clicked in her brain.

"Of course we can, Harry. Now, let's just try and get through the day, OK? First up's Potions with Mum. Ron, you want to come?"

"To the mirror or your Potions club?"

"Yes."

"OK then."

"Right. Grab a sandwich; you too, Harry, I want to watch you eat it. Now come on."

The Potions club was in the hospital wing, and although Cora Granger was officially the teacher in charge of the thing, Madam Pomfrey did most of the actual teaching. Rubies flowed into the Gryffindor hourglass in those, to the point where Snape only had to look at the Great Hall's scoreboard to fly into a murderous rage and start taking points from Gryffindors for infuriating breathing. It hadn't helped that Fred and George had got everyone in their year (aside from the Slytherins) to Transfigure their hats into propeller beanies before each and every Potions lesson.

Madam Pomfrey had turned out to be an excellent teacher, and it was left to Cora to run the wards in her absence. This suited her fine at the moment; the last thing Hermione needed was to see her mother on the verge of tears all the time. She'd gone into Hogsmeade after Ioan had gone back to London and phoned the practise; Marius said Ioan seemed fine, and that he hadn't seen him do anything odd. He did say that he'd been chatting to a pretty young Goth woman with acres of frizzy black hair for a hell of a long time when she'd come in to have her wisdom teeth out, but aside from that…

Cora had tuned out the rest of the conversation. The phone handset slipped out of her hands and bounced a little on the cord like a noisy bungee jumper. She'd ignored it.

So that was why.

Some other girl he'd met as a client was why.

_**Fuck.**_

She'd been wandering the wards aimlessly, strumming something minor-key and mournful sounding on her knackered old Rickenbacker acoustic when a voice came from one of the beds.

"You're pretty good at that, you know. Guitar's hard."

Cora turned. "Oh, erm, thanks…" she looked at the chart. "Bloody hell, that's a mouthful of a name you've got there. Anything shorter?"

"Just call me Tonks. What's your name?"

"Cora. Cora Granger."

"Well then, Cora Cora Granger, you're pretty good with that, but it's sad… want to talk? I'm a 7th-year Prefect in Hufflepuff; we don't judge or poke fun, we just listen."

"Well… it's about my husband…"

_It's funny_, Cora thought whilst she berated, belittled and ranted about Ioan in front of a student of all people. _Even though I didn't really want to, I just… opened up to her. The words just came out. It's strange… but not bad._

And then the door opened, and someone dragged in second year Ravenclaw with what looked like a small apple tree growing out of one of his ears, and Cora had had to go. But it had been lovely to chat. And now Cora wanted to do it more.

(Screen breeeeeeak! Screen break! Dana dah-nah dah-nah!)

It was after midnight, and the trio crept through the third floor under Harry's huge Invisibility cloak. They opened the door to the Mirror of Erised, only to find Albus Dumbledore there as well, putting his wand back in his pocket. Hermione found it almost impossible to suppress a brief squeak of fear.

"It's alright," he said, in that warm, smooth voice that put Hermione in mind of liquid chocolate. "You're not going to get in trouble for doing what this old man likes to do as well. Tell me, would any of you care for a sherbet lemon?"

"Um, my Dad said that if you have cavities then sherbet will get inside the little holes and start fizzing on the nerves in your teeth and that feels like someone's attacking the inside of your mouth with a laser and you don't know what a laser is do you and I'm rambling again aren't I?"

"Perhaps. You're still easier to understand than a good many people in the world. The ones who preach hate for those with different blood, or creed, or colour, or… proclivities… but anyway. I must tell you that the Mirror will be moved to a secure area of the school soon. Which, likely, you will not be able to access, since none of you know the spell Alohomora and play a musical instrument, and that's just for starters."

"… Was that a hint, Headmaster?"

"Well, Ms Granger, I am a mysterious old wizard; if I didn't drop cryptic hints that may or may not lead to grand adventure and the breaking of one hundred and fifty seven school rules, I would not be doing my job properly. Come, sit. I do so like it here…"

And so they sat in front of the mirror, and watched the visions within. A few times, Hermione looked at Harry; he had that dreamy, vacant smile on his face, the one that made all his troubles seem to just float away on the breeze. She knew what he was seeing, and she was certain Professor Dumbledore did too.

"Professor," said Harry after about an hour, "what do you see?"

"I? I see myself playing King George V in a Muggle moving picture, nineteen years from now. With a nice pair of thick, woollen socks."

And Harry simply let it go at that.

When they dragged themselves away, they were tired. Hermione still insisted that they all do their homework before bed, though; it was just a good habit to get into, and even if it wasn't perfect, at least it was _done_, and nobody could say otherwise. While Hermione and Ron were still grappling wilfully with the Potions homework that Madam Pomfrey had set on the Nose-Clearer Nostrum – a simple cure for colds and flu that for some reason didn't usually come up on the syllabus – Harry read the book on Nicholas Flamel. It was beautiful, with full colour illustrations of the man brewing his potions and healing the sick. Harry wanted to be that man; old, and wise, with nothing to do of a day except what he loved, and what he wanted. He wanted it with all his heart.

That night, Harry Potter slept peacefully, with a good dream in his head, for the first time in ten long years.

**AN#2: **You were warned. We're getting quite close to the end of the first book now; or at least, we're getting close to the end of the first book's plot. Maybe I should let it all jump ahead a little, maybe not. We'll have to wait and see!

Also, maybe we can get THREE updates in one month! That ain't happened in forever!

In the next probably-huge gap, go listen to that Elbow album, or search Mitch Benn on YouTube. Both are awesome.


	20. Shouldn't We Be On A Quest Or Something?

**AN: **And here it is, folks, Chapter 20. We're actually closing in on the end of the first year, after thirty thousand words and nineteen chapters written in… damn near nine bloody months. I suck at this. Anyway, new reviews from Fumes and Marius; the former thanked me for the shout-out, so I'll stick in another one (read her stuff and make me get another review, they keep me from going postal), and the latter liked the whole Dumbledore being genre-savvy as opposed to ZOMGEVIL. I stole that from Methods of Rationality, because I don't like Dumbledore bashing at all and Eliezer does a much better Albus than me. In a similar vein, Caprix has submitted a new review that compares my style to that of Mr. Yudkowsky – and then, in what I can only suppose was a fit of pique, questions as to whether or not I would consider this complimentary. I thank them very much for this, since I derive my style from a combination of him, Terry Pratchett, and Alex Turner off the Arctic Monkeys. Gods of sarcasm, they are. LeinadDjo remarks that the cure for the common cold exists, but is uncommon… yup. That was totally intentional. Honest. *sidles towards the door*. Finally, a raft of reviews from brigrove talking about various things – in order, thank you; check your PMs; Malfoy will probably get what's coming to him; and whilst I appreciate the sentiment it really isn't better than MoR. For a start, MoR's a lot better and more realistically plotted. But you're entitled to your opinion.

Christ alive, that was a long'un.

This chapter's development was soundtracked by my iPod's shuffle, so it's mostly laid-back, minor-key folk, indie and blues – with J-pop and screamo interludes. Cheers, Dad.

**DISCLAIMER:** I do not own Harry Potter. HP is property of JK Rowling and Warner Brothers for book and film respectively. Now can I please have my kids back, Jo?

The term was passing swiftly. This was good from the point of view of a narrator, because it meant I could skip ahead to the end and leave out the Quidditch matches and so forth, which I will, because Quidditch is irrelevant. Hermione, on the other hand, was very relevant, especially since three more members of the FMA had graded up in both karate and kung fu, including Lavender again. The invite had been extended to Ron and Harry to join in the exercise program. Harry agreed; Ron said it wouldn't be fair for a boy to hit girls, because they were weaker.

He performed a complete U-turn after Hermione had staged a demonstration, and for those last three words the reader is entirely free to substitute "hammered him around the room in a somewhat alarming manner until he began to spit bits of his own teeth". Ron's presence at the next and all subsequent practices was the epitome of grit, determination, and pants-wetting terror of a certain frizz-topped young girl. And her mates.

Cora watched her daughter closely for signs of incipient exhaustion, or at least as closely as one could when helping run a decidedly busy school infirmary; Hermione had always been active, but she could burn out very easily. When she did crash, she crashed _hard_, sleeping for days at a time and being grouchy as all hell when she woke up. Not that Cora was herself a morning person (not without the careful application of jet black coffee that had a tendency to corrode cups, flasks and Hogwarts flagstones); it was just hard to cope sometimes when it was just her. Ioan had always made her smile, though…

And then Cora started thinking about him again.

"Cora? Are you OK?"

The older woman started and turned round, sighing with relief as the gentle, happy-go-lucky expression of Nymphadora "Call Me Tonks On Pain Of Pain" Tonks faded into view. It was only when she insisted she was fine that her newest, youngest friend knew it wasn't the case.

"Listen… there's a Hogsmeade weekend coming up soon. You've got a flat near the White Ferret, right? I'll meet you there. We're allowed to stay in Hogsmeade overnight if we're in the company of a staff member, it's in the rules, I checked… and I don't reckon as you should be alooooooooooh BUGGER!"

Cora had a habit of walking and talking. Sadly, whenever stairs and benches and so forth were concerned, Tonks had a habit of walking and falling. She crashed to the ground in a heap and got up, reassuring her companion that she was absolutely fine.

"Tonks… you do realise I'm on the top floor."

"And you're a Healer." The girl flashed a slightly gap-toothed smile. "I'll get by."

"And you're sure you can get permission from…" Cora had to think a bit. "Pomona, isn't it?"

"I'm a Prefect. She thinks we know best – first among equals, that sort of thing. It's in the rulebook, Professor Sprout feels a little sorry for me because of my ability to trip on things that aren't there… the stage is set! Ain't not nobody stoppin' me now!"

"Except me…"

"But you wouldn't. Would you?" Tonks turned on her biggest, most pleading expression, one with eyes so huge they could've got a hug out of a gravel quarry. On a human being, the effect was much more severe.

"Awwwwwww! Of course not, Tonks… Now come on. You should have Herbology now. Greenhouse 4. And be careful when you're going down the second floor staircase- oh, dear…"

"I'm OK!"

(This screen break is brought to you in Dolby Surround Sound. The previous statement may or may not have been a lie…)

Life for Hermione was not, of course, running nearly so smoothly. Eventually, Snape had found Harry being beaten up in a corridor by the minion firm of Crabbe, Goyle and Flint and had given Harry a detention for not showing Gryffindor bravery. The fact that Marcus Flint was a sixth-year with the approximate dimensions of North Dakota and that Crabbe and Goyle weren't that far behind him didn't factor into his calculations. Dumbledore had intervened, but since he'd only heard about it at the very last moment from an apoplectic Cora Granger, he'd only had time to reassign the detention to one with Hagrid.

This was one with Draco Malfoy in it as well, which McGonagall only found out when she heard the Headmaster's desk splinter from repeated head impacts.

The detention's plan was this. Hagrid, armed with a crossbow that would've made Nobby Nobbs need a long lie down, would be accompanied by the two first years to look for the creature attacking unicorns in the Forbidden Forest. Dispensation was given for the boys to use Stunners if they found it, and for Hagrid to unleash every evil-looking and worse-smelling creature he had in his secret experimental breeding chambers – and hadn't _that_ been an interesting conversation.

The search began at eight in the evening, just as the sun was beginning to set. Draco, poised and graceful as a shuriken and about as lovable, gave Harry the usual greeting of casual threats and the promise of violence, but a single murderous glance from the man who had rescued him put paid to the Slytherin following them up. Harry then decided he loved Hagrid even more.

Hagrid's crossbow had a lantern hanging across it, and the pair followed that rather than try to keep apace of the huge gamekeeper. After a few hundred yards, they reached a clearing with a brace of very odd-looking creatures in it. They were roughly six feet tall and looked like a cross between a velociraptor and a secondary-school history teacher. Their apparent owner was there waiting for the boys.

"Now, yer'll 'ave a bit o' difficulty keepin' up with me when Oi starts runnin' of a pace, so Oi got Dumbledore ter let me let yer roide these."

"What. The hell. Are those?" Draco's face was a mask of terror, and his underwear was in need of a clean. Harry, on the other hand, was entranced by them. One squawked and knelt by him, and let him stroke the hair on its head.

"Dennissaurus. Very rare, they are. Got ter charm a female anaconda an' feed it a half-giant's blood fer forty days afore it'll lay a Dennissaurus egg, an' never you moind 'ow Oi found that out. Yer'll be ridin' 'em, an' they've not got the world's best eyesight. Talk to 'em, make sure as they know where ter go, loik."

"Let me come with you," said one in an accent that would have been vaguely reminiscent of Donald Pleasance had anyone present known who that was. "I can see, I can see perfectly…"

"An' don'tcher listen to 'em oither. Now kerm on, up yer get… Malfoy, it won't bite yer, yer smell too bad. Everyone on?" They were, Harry stroking his Dennissaurus' neck soothingly. "Roight. Let's go."

Soon, they saw what he'd meant earlier. Hagrid was a runner in the same way that a monsoon was a bit damp; add to that an almost prescient ability to track animals, in this case unicorns, and he was able to move like a spooked ostrich. Harry and Draco both were glad of their mounts, since nothing short of a souped-up quad bike would've kept up with Hagrid otherwise. They thumped through the undergrowth, stealth being rather like Andromeda. It was a faraway concept that didn't really affect them much.

(What's that coming over the hill, is it a screen break? Is it a screen breeeeeeak?)

The moon was high that night, but nobody saw it. The depths of the Forest were in pitch-darkness during even the brightest sunny days, so no moonlight, however serenely beautiful, had a hope of penetrating the thick layers of leaves and branches hundreds of feet above Harry's head. Draco was whimpering and clinging onto the neck of his Dennissaurus as if about to strangle it, and the creature was muttering words that would never make it into the release cut of a Radio 4 programme. Then it stopped. Then Hagrid stopped. Then, for the two boys mounted on their bizarre steeds, the world stopped.

A creature in a black cloak – it couldn't be called human, it couldn't _be_ human, humans shouldn't bend that way – was hunched over the body of a weakly kicking baby unicorn. Around it was a pool of silver, sparkling in the light of Hagrid's lantern. The boys heard a slurping sound, one that reminded Harry of Petunia's carpet cleaner going over a particularly stubborn stain, and the foal stopped kicking.

"Fiat homi," said the creature, and it stood up. "Fiat lux." It raised its too-long arms over its hooded head and a sphere of silver light, shot through with a sickly, disturbing green, appeared between the slim-fingered hands.

"Fiat mors."

"RUN!"

The boys didn't need Hagrid to tell them twice. Draco, the more experienced horseman, raked his feet back as he dragged the Dennissaurus' neck around in the other direction. Harry, being tiny and adorable, just had to tell his steed to get him out of there and it complied. The creature hurled the ball of light at the fleeing boys and impacted between them, startling the Dennissauri and sending them off in different directions. Behind them they heard Hagrid roaring and firing his crossbow, then the gristly crack of a quarrel the size of a fencepost splitting ancient hardwood. The creature screamed and the air hummed with energy for a split second. Then there was a crash as Hagrid himself split a tree into fragments with his bulk.

The creature took off, pinballing between the tree trunks and shrieking murderously at the boy he was chasing. This, by some stroke of luck, happened to be Draco.

"NO! Not me! It's _him _you want, not me!"

I never said, dear reader, that it was a stroke of good luck.

The creature screamed again and took off in the direction of Draco's flailing arm. Harry squeaked and slammed himself flat against his mount's back, urging it forward, desperate not to be hurt again. Blood pounded in his ears as he rode for his life, every kidney-shaking jolt bringing him that bit closer to safety, to the people who looked after him. He swore under his breath that he would not let them down. Soft moonlight began trickling onto the ground before him; he was close, so close to fleeing and getting to safety.

"Fiat! Mors!"

Harry's mount was thrown into the air with a sharp bang as the Forest began to thin out into Hogwarts' grounds. The boy landed and rolled, something he'd learned from the days Petunia had thrown him down the stairs for some half-imagined slight, and he fetched up against a thick tree trunk with the creature bearing down on him. Stopping a few feet in front of him, the creature rose up on skinny legs sharply defined against the tattered cloak, and revealed its face. Harry wanted to scream, he dearly wanted to scream, but no sound would come. It died in his throat like the innocence of a child soldier, so he lay there, mouth open, waiting for an inevitable death.

The most horrible thing, some detached part of him observed, was that the face seemed familiar under the twisted lines and bared, gleaming-white teeth that shone in the limp moonlight. It felt… it felt like some precious thing, some piece of safety of his had been taken away and bent into evilness. This detached part waited for the end, knowing it would come, and wondered what dying would feel like.

And that was when the creature hesitated. Just for a moment, the lips closed around the teeth, and the lines softened, and that faint feeling of familiarity sharpened and some ancient-feeling memories in the depths of Harry's head started clanging like cathedral bells-

THWOK.

The creature's raised arm disappeared at the elbow, a spear nailing the crackling remnant to the tree above Harry's head. Blood dripped slowly into the boy's hair as the creature yowled in pain and leapt through the trees, disappearing into the canopy to lick its wounds in the deep parts of the Forest where even Hagrid was afraid of treading.

"'Arry, little 'Arry, moi lad, come 'ere, it's alroight, yer safe now, should've got 'ere quicker, no tellin' what that thing could've done to yer…"

And the Boy-Who-Lived was wrapped up in Hagrid's huge arms, and he was saved again.

(Well, now that Action Girl has had some actual _action_, I can call a screen break.)

"Oi'm tellin' yer, 'Eadmaster, ee wuz almost killed out there! Oi won't put up with it. Oi failed the little lad once before, Oi won't fail 'im twoice. 'E's ter 'ave no part in this foight, y'understand? No part at all."

"I wouldn't have this if there was any other choice, Rubeus. You must understand; he needs to see that he can be a hero too. If it makes you feel any better, Miss Granger is the most naturally gifted witch I have seen in a generation, and where Harry goes, she will follow, along with Ron Weasley and the rest of that exercise group she's put together. I'm given to understand Professor McGonagall has exhorted the Quidditch team to join in; mens sana in corpora sana, as they said in the Classical world. Now, can I press you to a small candied starfish? I received a crate from a diplomat, with the complements of a city with a highly unusual name…"

The conversation drifted back to normal volume, just as Dumbledore had planned it. The benefits of having a heroic Harry Potter rather outweighed the risks, or at least so the old wizard reasoned. The unfortunate fact was that Harry wasn't actually there to eavesdrop, which was a sizeable fly in Dumbledore's very small pot of ointment. He was, in fact, in the hospital wing, eavesdropping on a shouting match between Cora and Madam Pomfrey. _So_, he thought, _were people in Bournemouth_.

The row, ostensibly about Harry's treatment but really about their differing takes on medical practice and the efficacy of Muggle vs. magical remedies, had been going on for the best part of an hour. It had moved from raging at Dumbledore's sending a defenceless young boy out into a death trap of a forest onto unicorns and was currently debating the pros and cons of immortality. They were also waking up some of the other students.

This happened about once every couple of weeks.

In a lull, Harry sat bolt upright, mind working as fast as it could. _You can get immortality from unicorn blood? Then that's why the creature wants it, that's what the bad man's looking for – and why do I call him that? – and there's a catch with unicorn blood, you get cursed, cursed with bad luck for the rest of your life, so there needs to be a safer way to get it, what's a safer way, what's a safer way? _Sweat poured down his young face as it screwed up in concentration. _FLAMEL! Nicolas Flamel made the Philosopher's Stone, and that makes the Elixir of Life, which makes you ageless so long as you have the stone! You could dunk it in sick and drink that and you'd get another hundred years! But then… if freaks lived forever, would that mean that freaks would be punished forever? Hermione'd say… Hermione'd say no, that they could run away, but where to? Everywhere hates freakish little boys like me, everywhere… it has to be destroyed. And that'll be a good thing, because it means it can end and I can see them without the mirror. The mirror! That must be where Dumbledore's hiding it! It's connected to this somehow, it's all connected, I have to get Hermione!_

"… Er, Madam Granger?"

In an instant, Cora was at his side. "Yes, love?"

"I'd like to see Hermione, if that's alright… could you bring her here?" _Idiot freak, you paused too long. She'll twig. Expect punishment later._

"Of course. I'll bring her over straight away." With a sharp look at Madam Pomfrey, who harrumphed off into the Really Weird Spell Damage Ward, Cora took off for Hermione's location. A few minutes pass, and Hermione was by his side, as was Ron and some bedraggled-looking members of the FMA.

"Harry, what is it? Has someone hurt you-"

"No! No. I think someone might come after me, though. And I know what's in the third floor corridor."

"Hold on… everyone, gather round… closer… Muffliato! Now. What's in there?"

"I think it's the Philosopher's Stone."

Bits fell into place for Hermione. There was something deeply wrong…

"What if You-Know-Who wants it? What if that's how he's coming back, with the Stone? And Snape knows about it… oh my… possession! He must have possessed someone! I bet it was Snape, he knows about it anyway. Ron, cloak! FMA, we ride!"

"Honour and glory!" The FMA yelled out, save for Ron on the end.

"We have a catchphrase now?"

"Yes, Ronald, we have a catchphrase now."

"Oh. Okay."

Harry struggled out of the hospital bed and stood before them, about as heroic as a skinny bespectacled victim in elderly striped pyjamas can. "This is going to be hard. The Headmaster must have it defended. But we have to do this, for everyone's sake. If it's who we think it is… everyone dies."

There was a deafening silence.

"Er… before that, could I just nip over there and have a sandwich? Ta. Sorry. Um… we should go."

Once the FMA had finished being disapproving at Ron, they took off for the third floor corridor. Cora Granger returned from a trip to the loo to find an empty bed where the Boy Who Lived had been.

She had the distinct impression that it wasn't going to be her day.

**AN #2: **Today's fanfic recs are Undocumented Features, Harry Potter and the Nightmares of Futures Past (Time Travel Tense Trouble FTW!), and everything by my current beta MariusDarkwolf. Thank you for reading and reviewing, I love you all, and yay for everything!

I may or may not be writing this on the back of a pitcher of some weird purple cocktail Darren next door got me.


	21. EPIC LONG: Stone Free

**AN: **As I write this, there's only been one new review, courtesy of my beta MariusDarkwolf. It's the usual sort of thing, so I thank him for the compliments and will privately remain convinced that they're undeserved and that I'm a complete hack… and I've just said this out loud. Oh well.

This chapter soundtracked by an English singer called Frank Turner, whom I've recently really gotten into. Check him out, so long as you don't have right-wing views or are a hipster dick.

**DISCLAIMER: **I own bugger-all to do with Harry Potter except the books and an electronic wand toy, which I have to say was only purchased because of the convenient shape for, shall we say… playtime… oh come on, you can by vibrators shaped like renowned misogynist Edward Cullen, how's this any weirder?

The ten children huddled like penguin spies on a chilly night underneath Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak. Halfway to the corridor Kara had been distracted by something (_possibly a shiny object or a thought passing unmolested through her mind_, Hermione thought, perhaps unkindly) and the resulting pileup had deposited them on the floor in front of Neville Longbottom.

"You're going after the third floor corridor, aren't you?"

"Well… yeah. We reckon-"

"I don't _care_ what you blimmin' well reckon, Hermione Granger! I'm sick of this! You lot make trouble for everybody else here, that's why we're last on House Points for the eighth year in a row, in case you were wondering. Do you know what Snape does in his lessons now that you dragged a third of his class out of lessons? Ask Dean and Seamus why they always look so tired, go on, ask them! You made life better for you and worse for everyone else and I'm not having it! I won't let you pass! Any of you!"

Ron stepped forward. "Listen, Neville, mate, don't you think you're overreacting?"

"No! No I do not, mate." Hermione hadn't been aware that an eleven-year-old's voice could drip with bitterness to that extent. "I'm sorry that I have to be the one to burst your happy little bubble of denial, but, well… I have to be. I'll fight you if I have to!"

Hermione decided it was her go at about the point Neville put up his hands in some approximation of a boxer's stance. "Neville, I'm really sorry about this…" She raised her wand.

"Expelliarmus!"

Hermione's wand skittered across the flagstones of the corridor.

"Been practicing that one, I have, ever since Malfoy realised he could chuck curses at a Gryffindor within a hundred yards of Snape. Now what are you going to do, Hermione?"

"Well, since you ask…" Hermione dropped low to avoid the boy's stunned guard, slipped a hand through the gap in it, and drove the heel of her left palm into his right shoulder just as her right thumb pressed into the part opposite it. Neville made an odd little noise like a broken accordion with a nasal infection and fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.

"I didn't want to do that, for what it's worth. I really didn't."

They huddled back under the cloak and set off again, leaving Neville on the flagstones shaking slightly and going "wibble".

(Wow, short amount of time before this screen break.)

The ten of them shrugged off the invisibility cloak as they opened the door. A soft "Alohomora" from Jessie was all they needed to push open the gently squeaking door into the room. A harp was set up in the corner, plinking gently away at itself, but that wasn't what they were looking at, goodness no.

That honour went to the Cerberus.

To be honest, this wasn't surprising. A giant three-headed dog will tend to draw the immediate attention of those around it, even if it is having the chasing the rabbit dream. Especially if it's having the chasing the rabbit dream. The harp played, and the dog shook, and Parvati had to dodge a haphazardly swung leg.

"Right, gang, there's a trapdoor here. _Duro_." She tore off a little of her sleeve, turned it to stone, and dropped it down the hole, counting slowly. There was silence.

"So, do we jump down? I haven't found a Feather Fall charm in any of my books-"

"I think we should jump, Hermione."

"Ron, be realistic, we could be leaping to our deaths! At least let's conjure a rope, lower one of us down-"

"The harp's stopped playing, Hermione."

"Yes, well, I'm sure we can arrange you some light musical accompaniment. Now, the charm's a variant of _Incarcerous_-"

"The dog's waking up, Hermione."

There was a snarl. It wasn't loud. It didn't have to be loud. It was the growl of something that is shortly to become a tooth-tipped ballistic missile pointed at you.

"EVERYONE GET DOWN THE HOLE!"

They leapt, the dog's paws scraping for purchase on the smooth flagstones as it bounded towards them. It let out a bark like a sonic weapon and lunged for Parvati, who threw herself out of the way and rolled over to the corner of the room. The dog swiped at her again, but she was able to duck underneath it and, acting purely on instinct, cast a Repulsion Charm at the floor beneath her. Parvati flew like a bullet at Ron, who caught her and fell down into… whatever it was that lay beneath them. Hermione breathed an inward sigh of relief, grabbed Harry and leapt down, the whoosh of a paw passing over her head as she fell.

About twenty feet later, she landed with a splat.

"Okay, okay, not dead. Good thing. Everyone else OK?"

"I… I don't know," said Ron through another sandwich. He ate when nervous. "But there's something weird about this thing, like it's… like it's holding onto us."

"Holding… oh no. _Lumos_!"

The rest of the FMA cast the Lighting charm and saw what had happened. They were waist-deep in green vines that looked somehow malevolent. Padma, who had paid attention in Herbology, started screaming and thrashing around like a mad thing. Hermione, who had _really_ paid attention, did not. The important thing to do when confronted by Devil's Snare, so she'd read, was to keep still and start casting light spells at it until it went away. Therefore, she told everyone that under no circumstances was anyone to panic.

Hermione knew a lot of things, but people weren't any of them.

Our protagonist here is now in quite a bit of pain, from three different areas – well, not counting the gigantic evil plant life squishing the bejeezus out of her, because really we can take that as read. Her mind's on fire, trying desperately to think of a suitably powerful sunlight-based spell. Her ears are subjected to eight people screaming at once, that peculiar shrill tone even Ron was making through a sandwich. And her eyes, they'd alighted on Harry. He was sinking slowly into the plant, an oddly chirpy little smile on his skinny, razor-cheekboned face. They widened as the boy, almost as if he'd read her mind, gave her a nod.

_He wants this,_ she thought. _He's in so much pain that he wants this._

_**Bugger THAT.**_

"LUMOS HOLEM!"

And now it was the turn of Harry's eyes to widen as Hermione shot a bolt of pure sunlight into the air, which was probably a mistake, all things considered. The plant – whilst it didn't actually have eyes to widen or burn – outright screamed, reacting to it in the same manner as a vampiric computer nerd on a Media Studies course. Its long creepers shot back into limpness like a pool attendant hearing an early husband and the kids fell further, landing on the stone below, wizard hardiness keeping them from breaking anything in spite of everything that D&D had taught mankind. Hermione strode over to Harry and bundled him into a bone-cracking hug. Ron, in one of his fleeting moments of sandwich-powered perception, saw his first friend's shoulders tremble slightly and said nothing.

"You… you saved my life, Hermione…" said Harry, once his lungs were back in a roughly human condition. Subconsciously, he patted his ribs down to make sure they were intact.

"Of course I did."

"Why?"

Hermione recoiled as if the Boy Who Lived had just sucker-punched her, which in fairness was what it felt like. "Because… Harry, because you're my friend, and because you deserve a real, proper life, and because _nobody dies today_! _NOBODY_!" She seemed to sag after the outburst, but it was momentary. "Let's keep moving. Every moment we spend here gives Snape more time to figure out the challenges ahead."

There was a chorused "Honour and glory!" from the shaken girls of the FMA. Ron made a brave attempt, but it just out as "hurfl um murfl" and a small mist of grated cheese. Hermione looked into Harry's eyes.

"Honour and glory," he said, and meant it.

(This. Is. SCREEN BREAK!)

The third room was bare, cold dark-grey Aberdeenshire granite covering the place with a flickering torch over the door. It was clearly locked, and Jessie's charm didn't work this time. Nor did Lavender's Left Cross Hex, and nor did Kara's surprisingly powerful Blasting Curse, though that did leave some slight charring. Not on the door, though; Parvati had just happened to be standing a bit close and received an impromptu gamin bob, and voiced loudly her conjecture that some nights karma just plain hated you.

They looked at the lock. Hermione snapped her fingers.

"Well, obviously we just need to find the key, don't we? Now then, what're the wand movements for a Summoning Charm…" Hermione trailed off into muttered musings on fourth-year Charms work. Ron raised a hand. "… short, sharp upward flick on saying the name of the object summoned – yes, Ronald, what is it?"

"Um, Hermione, I hate to come over all Cassandra on you again but I really don't think this is a good idea-"

"Oh please. Ron, you're just being ridiculous. It's a fetch puzzle, you've just got to find the key and put it in the lock, it's obvious. Look, I'll prove it. _Accio key_!"

Hermione was, even by the standards of an eleven-year-old with an inherited love of caffeine that stretched into physical need during exam season, very, very fast. As such, she only got a couple of light scratches on her back as a forest of keys slammed into the door behind her, some careening off the stonework and flittering back up into the air like noisy, annoyed-sounding metal wasps.

"Somehow, Hermione," said Ron after they'd made sure the girl was alright, "I told you so just… just isn't enough."

"Okay… fine. Well done, Nosferontu." She looked around, hoping for laughter and finding puzzled silence. "Nobody's gonna come with me on that one, then? Oh well. Ron, as your reward, you can get the key. Show the rest of us how it's done."

"WHAT? Hermione, you've seen my magic in class, you know I'll balls it up-"

"You're better than me in Flying."

"Well, yeah, but so are most bricks, Hermione-"

"You're better than anyone else here in Flying."

"Um, mate, I'm really not sure I like where this is going-"

"Your broom. Is over there." She pointed with her finger – a racing broom was in the corner, a Nimbus 2000 to be precise. Ron dribbled slightly and swallowed another mouthful of cheesy anti-panic sandwich.

"After this challenge I am keeping that broom and she will be my bestest-ever friend and I will love her forever and ever. So you know."

"Whatever," Hermione huffed, "just get on the thing, would you? We can't have long."

Ron shook a shoulder-length crop of ginger hair from his shoulders, in a way that had almost certainly been stolen from his brother Charlie, on whom it actually worked. "Try and stop me." He stepped over to the broom and kicked off.

"Now, it should be the big one with the broken wing. Can you see it?"

"Yep… hold on, if you can see it, why can't you just Summon it?"

"Because, Ronald, I was almost made into a dartboard last time."

"Fair enough. Going in on an attack run now."

"Besides, it's your turn."

"Wait, what – GYAAAAAARGH!"

The show went on for about ten minutes, the FMA watching a display of aeronautic excellence unparalleled in the history of blind, terrified improvisation. He buzzed the girls and Harry, dropping the key into Hermione's outstretched hand, and she opened the door. Ron was the last one through, ashen of face and white of knuckle. The girls pulled the door shut behind him as he left the room, and the dull thump of flying keys into the thick wood was unmistakeable. He got off the broom.

"Ron, you're bleeding. From… oh dear… that's quite a lot of places."

"Am I?" The boy looked down. "Oh. Yeah. Well, er, whoops…"

Harry strode forward, gaze two cold slivers of jade glinting behind silver circles. "_Episkey_," he said, and repeated the spell until Ron's multifarious cuts were healed. He then turned to Hermione. "Don't do that again."

His voice was quiet and monotone, the delivery saltpan-flat. Like the old Harry had – or, as Hermione now realised in a sudden flash of inspiration, the real one. The one he'd obviously kept hidden to help others stop worrying about him. It was what he considered he was worth, always less than others, but tinged with dull acceptance rather than the will to make things otherwise.

Except – and if you hadn't been around Harry for an entire year then you just plain wouldn't pick it up – that wasn't quite true any more. The quiet, studious boy, who barely spoke except in Madam Pomfrey's Potions sessions, had had his stoicism rub off on the FMA, and in turn Hermione's inner fire and sheer force of personality had begun to rub off on him. There was a spark in there. Not much, admittedly, but indisputably there.

"Nobody dies today," she repeated. It went around the room, Ron touching Harry gently on his back as he said it. He didn't flinch, which was a good sign. "Come on," Hermione continued, "let's go to the next room."

In here was a gigantic chess set. In fact, using gigantic made me miss a perfect opportunity, dear reader, to use the word leviathan in normal conversation. The pieces towered above the first-years – at least, those that remained did. On the white side of the field half the pieces were gone, and on the black side, there were even fewer, though the queen was still on the board. A smile came to the lips of both Ron Weasley and Kara St James, who nobody had ever seen play chess or even spell it correctly.

"Simple," said Ron. "We play our way across the board, win the game, and move on to the next-"

"_REDUCTO_!"

Kara did, as has already been mentioned, have quite the Blasting Curse on her, and at least knew that the king had to be eliminated to win the game. The piece's torso was blown clean off and the sword blade hovered delicately in front of the half-king.

"My way's simpler," she said, in a Somerset accent as broad as an apple orchard. Ron was tearing his hair out in frustration and had descended into incoherence. It was probably merciful on his blood pressure, therefore, that the sword blade tipped forward and caught him on the head. He went over like a Christmas tree and his vision blurred, greying at the edges like a badly-restored Buster Keaton film.

In this state, he thought he saw someone walking towards him. She – when she got closer it was rather obvious – was a sixth-year Gryffindor, since she had on one of the tighter uniforms that the weirder Slytherin girls liked to call Snape-baiters that were only issued after NEWTs. She was also wearing a Prefect's badge on the collar of her robes. Ron's eyes widened as she bent down to touch his brow. "It'll be alright," she said. "You'll have a lot worse than this later on… and there will be better days to come. You'll… you'll figure things out. It won't be easy, but it will be right, and at the end of the day that's what matters. You're going to be OK…"

"Who… who are you…" he said, and a few seconds later his vision came back properly.

"Er… hold on, gimme a moment, let me check…" Kara's accent thickened as she made a show of pulling out a handwritten identity card. "I'm Kara. Had a feelin' I might be. Anyway… you alright down there, lad? Only that looked as if it gave you a right ol' ding…" She prodded him in the nose with her wand. "Yaarp, you'd best stay here. I'm sure the rest'll understand. I'll get Madam Granger and the Headmaster. The rest of you lot, get a move on. Dunno how many rooms are left, but the air don't taste like there is. Best hurry."

After a couple of blank looks and the general concurrence that Kara's meanderings were probably best left to those who understood them, which didn't include anyone they knew (including, so opined the particularly uncharitable, Kara herself), the remainder of the FMA broke into a run, Hermione and Harry leading the charge through the great stone arch. Ron sat up and tried to stagger after them, but his head swam and once he'd stopped falling over, they had gone.

(Screen break. Screen breaks are what happen when scenes go off big time stylee…)

Eventually, having had their stride pattern knocked by the foul-smelling remains of an extremely deceased security troll, the FMA skidded to a halt in a room with a fireplace, black flames roaring in the grate. In front of it was a note attached to a shelf full of bottles with what looked to the Muggleborns in the party very much like a ninja star and to Hermione like something she'd got for Christmas a couple of years ago. Fumbling in a pocket for the little bronze cylinder her Dad had given her, she picked up the note and read it out.

"_Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,_

_Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,_

_One among us seven will let you move ahead,_

_Another will transport the drinker back instead,_

_Two among our number hold only nettle wine,_

_Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line._

_Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore,_

_To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:_

_First, however slyly the poison tries to hide_

_You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;_

_Second, different are those who stand at either end,_

_But if you would move onwards neither is your friend;_

_Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,_

_Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;_

_Fourth, the second left and the second on the right_

_Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight._"

"… You know," said Lavender, "not to sound horrible or anything, but I'm really glad Kara stayed behind for this one."

"It's a logic puzzle. Most of magical Britain has brain cells that die alone, you've only got to look at the Slytherins to see that. Solve the riddle, solve the puzzle. It's obvious!"

"Okay then, O fearless leader, what's the answer then…"

"… Yeah, erm, you know the word obvious? Not the same thing as the word easy. Hold on… we only want the one to go forward, because I am not going anywhere near the troll room ever again ever… let's get some numbers written down…"

As Hermione worked, Harry sat on the floor looking at the fire. _Black flames… black flames… if there's a potion to counteract it then that must be Wigluf's Flame! I read about it in a back issue of One Hundred And One Really Stupidly Dangerous Potions You Can Make In Your Back Garden But Shouldn't If You Like Having Eyebrows! Now, the potion, what's it called, Heorotendraft… pure white in colour, smells like pine resin, tastes like boiled socks, and so sour it'll take the roof off your mouth if you don't drink it within thirty seconds. Come on, boy, which one was like that…_

Hermione was still deliberating when Harry leapt to his feet and swigged down about half of the bottle she'd carefully labeled number 3.

"What are you _DOING_ ? That could be absolutely bloody anything, Harry, you might die-"

"Eurgh. Oh, that's boiled socks all right. Got it right. That black stuff's Wigluf's Flame, and the antidote's Heorotendraft."

"… Wha?" Hermione looked utterly defeated.

"Do you remember Dumbledore giving us when we got detention with Snape for incorrect use of the syllable 'un' in polite conversation? It was in a book I read then. Come on. There's another dose left, but drink it quick or you'll never want to drink anything else again. We can do this, Hermione!"

"Hold on," piped up Jessie Hoxton, "just you two? What about us? We all stick together"

"Well, now we just can't. Wigluf's Flame's made by burning dragon blood plasma with the venom of a cockatrice, and this bottle only had enough for two doses. I've had one… and Hermione can have the other."

"Why her? Why not us? She's done bugger all so far!"

"Put it this way, girls," said Harry, his tone hardening to widespread shock. "Either she goes, or I don't. Will you make Hermione face whatever's out there alone, without a meat shield? Without a friend? Are you people that cruel?"

There was a vague muttering and then Jessie spoke again. "Actually, no. We don't want that. But what about one of us going in her place?"

"Not going to happen."

"Why?"

"Because I already palmed Hermione the potion."

"… Oh," said Jessie, and this time it was her turn to look defeated.

"Misdirection, Jessie," Hermione smiled. "I love you all dearly… you've all been such good friends. But this is a place you can't go. Not now. I won't risk you dying. What honour or glory is there in breaking a promise?"

There was a brief silence, and Lavender stepped forward from the huddle of girls. "We'll go and check on the other two. Just… don't break your promise either. That goes for both of you. We trust you, Harry Potter."

"I'm a good boy," he said. It was… weird, to say the least, but then that was Harry Potter all over. Odd, damaged, or broken as a teacup in a bag of spanners depending on who you asked, but loyal and selfless and wholly, truly good, in that strange way only people who've been rescued from hell have a chance of being.

Hermione took him by the arm, and they stepped through the flames, and they were gone.

(Looks like Reader found a Scene Break!)

The two of them stepped out from the black flames and into a large stone chamber, this one the warm Bath stone of a handsome Georgian property. It was well-lit, and without traps, and almost entirely empty.

Standing in front of a tall, gaudily-decorated mirror was a skinny, worried looking man with a turban on. At the sound of their footsteps, he jumped and spun around to face them, letting off an Arm-Locker Curse and a barrage of lesser, more esoteric hexes. Hermione leapt out of the way and came up pointing her tiger-striped wand at him; Harry just dropped to the ground and wished he had a way of making his glasses less prone to falling off. It was him who noticed a flicker of dark movement near his skull, but no-one else. He assumed it was just a stray jinx and paid it no mind until the casting stopped.

"Professor Quirrell? But, but Snape-"

"W-w-w-what ab-bout Professor S-s-snape? H-have you seen h-him? Y-you should've gone t-to D-d-d-dumbledore st-st-straight away. I was d-doing the rounds wh-when I p-p-p-passed the corridor… I s-saw the d-d-d-door open and w-went to, to check the d-d-defences!"

Hermione sighed, and pointed her wand at the floor again. "I'm sorry Professor… we thought that since Snape's such an evil man, he'd be stealing-"

"Evil? N-n-n-n-not at all, Miss… G-g-granger, isn't it? A n-nasty man, int-t-timidating and, and very r-rude, b-b-but evil? No. He's n-no more evil th-than I am a gnhhhk."

Hermione was nonplussed. "What's a Gnurk?" she said, as Harry scrambled to his feet and pulled out his wand.

It was too late to heal Quirrell, and in any event the spell used to kill him wasn't healable. The Defence Professor pitched forward, the lights dying in his eyes before the green glow had even faded from his back. Hermione blanched and stepped back as the Boy-Who-Lived skittered to her side.

"Hermione… get behind me."

"Now, now, lad," said the thing from the Forest, hands still emitting that weird silvery-green glow. "Hermione needs to see my face too. You can't protect her from it, and besides, you shouldn't want her to. After all," and it removed the hood from its head, and the terrible familiarity returned, and tears began to stream down Hermione's face before she even knew what was happening…

"She's her daddy's girl."

**AN #2: **Dun, dun, DUUUUUUUUUUUUN!

For those of you WTFing, and I'd imagine there are gonna be a few of you, do not worry. All will become clear, when I get around to writing the next chapter. I think you'll like it.

Fanfic recs for the inevitable huge gap: Fumes43's work, An Aunt's Love by Emma Lipardi, The Last Casualties by muggledad, and something by Lomonaaeren. What by Lomonaaeren? Take your pick. There're thousands of them, so there's bound to be something you'll enjoy in there. I swear she's got a breeding program. If you can handle Drarry, I'd go for Changing Of The Guard.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed and favourited, and see you all next time!


	22. BONUS LONG: Personal Demons

**AN: **So far, there have been three new reviews. One is from Fumes43, who helped beta the previous chapter and felt compelled to wax further on it, for which she has my thanks. One is from MariusDarkwolf, whom, like Fumes, laments my cliffhanger at the end of the previous chapter. To both of them, I say: sorry. It was the only way that the chapter was ever going to be uploaded on time. It was necessary, and I've been planning that twist for a while now. New reviewer ChoboChan says general nice things, which is pleasant of them and they have my thanks, and as for why Hermione's dad is possessed, that'll be addressed here. Finally, there's one from new reviewer Socar37. He makes some cogent observations – Harry is healing a little, but probably not enough to survive the Battle of Hogwarts – and likens my version of Hermione to his daughter. I pray to whichever gods are listening that she's not quite as, you know… _stabby _as Hermione is in this fic, but whatever. If my characters feel human, then I'm doing this right.

**DISCLAIMER: **I am not JK Rowling. I'd be terrified if she read this and thought that I was claiming her characters as my own, because that woman can afford assassins. I should also point out that this chapter contains strong language and a boatload of exposition. You were warned.

_The time is 5 p.m., according to the grey clock on the grey concrete wall of the grey rec room in this grey holiday camp in this grey country. The only thing that isn't grey is the sky, and that's because it's already pitch dark. The date is 26__th__ February, 1983. I am in Albania, trying fruitlessly to concentrate on a letter home. This team-building exercise was a gigantic mistake. I don't know why Graeme commissioned it. Oh, wait, yes I do. It's because he couldn't have a decent idea if one cockslapped him into next week. Sod it. I'm going for a walk. At least it's stopped raining. Not that it could really be said to rain here; there's nought but a dull, soul-sucking drizzle that reminds me of the romantic heartland of the north Surrey commuter belt, where circumstances force me to call home. It seems obvious in retrospect. Proper rain might be an interesting activity, which I think are illegal here._

_Graeme, bless his knee-length reinforced hiking socks, has decided we're going for a ramble tomorrow. Since I know for a fact that he once got lost in his own practice, I'm going to scout out the woodland area of the walk so that we don't end up being shouted at by more angry, gun-wielding Soviets than strictly necessary. After about an hour of traipsing through increasingly grim woodland, the only company a compass and whatever insects escape being trodden on, I remember that my own sense of direction isn't that much better than his and realise that I have become thoroughly lost. And now the drizzle's come back, seeping through my cagoule like rising damp. I wish I was home._

_You see, I have a young family. My daughter's two and charging around the place like a mad thing half the time, and Cora's worse if anything. I remember how we met… D&D Soc meeting, she was an elven ranger and I was a skinny human druid. Oh, the stories we told… since you asked, the Epic level quests were always the best, and no you don't get to find out if what I did with my +5 Staff of Penetration. I want to go back to her so much… this place is killing me, the damp and the concrete and the boredom and fucking Graeme and the evil ghost creatures hovering around medieval tiaras. I hate it. Some team-building exercise this turned out to be._

_Hang on, what was that last thing agai-_

CRACK!

…

_A quick check of my watch reveals I've been out of it for about three hours since seeing that ghost come at me. Everything seems fine._

"Oh, little wizard, such power… I will bend you and break you and make you mine…"

_What? Who the hell are you? And I don't like the way you said that last line, it sounded really pervy. Haven't you heard of AIDS?_

"What on Earth are you talking about? Anyway, this is irrelevant. I will have your magic, Ioan Granger… consultant dentist from… near Surbiton… who likes to tell stories…"

_Wait, wait, back up a minute. Magic? Me? Magic doesn't exist outside of Dungeons & Dragons and the weirder anime serieses. Series? Series._

"You're a Muggle, then."

_If by that you mean someone who can't do magic, then yes. So is everyone I know, because magic doesn't exist._

"… Well, **tits**."

(Have a screen break. Have a KitKat.)

Hermione stepped forward and walked into Harry's outstretched arm, pushing against it. "Dad?"

"Yes, Hermione-chan… and then again, no. I wear the vessel, the reeking shell of that pathetic Muggle-"

"Don't call him that. Don't you dare call him that."

"Why ever not, Hermione? It's not like he can hear us… you might as well put on Potter's robes and claim you're him. His power over this body is long since gone… has been ever since you left for school. Your sort should know better than to come here." Unwilling tears were forcing themselves from the corners of Hermione's eyes as the half-living man continued. "I am in control. He let me take it, in the end… he said goodbye to you at the station and gave himself to me, his sworn enemy. Is that not pathetic? Is that not the antithesis of what you believe, that your Daddy was invincible, that no man could best him? Your weakness sickens me. Muggles truly are degenerate."

The girl stifled a sob, her shoulders jerking slightly as she did so. "You're wrong."

"And what makes you say that, little child?"

"Because you have to be, otherwise what's the point?"

"Ah… I forgot how much of a sense of fairness the host instilled in you. Let me remind you of something. Life is not fair. The world is cold and dark and needs the powerful to rule it. And I am powerful, and deserve power over you."

"You deserve _nothing_, you're evil!"

"Silly girl. There's no evil, nor good. Only power, and those with the will to seek it. And I _will_ have power… with the Stone. And you will give it to me."

"… No." She trembled like a leaf in body and in voice, but there she was, defiant. Harry stiffened his arm against her chest, his eyes hard behind the thick glass of his spectacles.

"Then let me offer you a choice. You give me what I want, or your friend dies."

(There's going to be a lot of back-and-forth between scenes, so there won't be many references in the screen break captions)

_June 25__th__, 1984. Hermione is four today. We're having a party for her with the people from her playgroup, and frankly I'm don't know what I'm more terrified by; the fact that my daughter's going crazy on her annual overdose of sugar, or the fact that my wife seems to be going the same way on a box of cheap red someone's hooked up to a soda streamer and written Vimto on. On the one hand, my cousin Utz just sent another batch of horrible porcelain figurines and he gets all upset when Hermione kicks lumps out of them in fits of pique and good taste. On the other, Cora's put together a drinking game based around Star Blazers: The Bolar Wars, and everyone's getting in on it. Frankly, I'm surprised she can read the subbing script. I consider joining her, but elect to stay in the kitchen with the hidden bottle of cheap-as-hell rhubarb vodka that pacifies the creature in my head. Ghastly stuff, but it's the only thing I've found that works._

…

_September 10__th__, 1984. Hermione's first day at school was today. I've never felt more proud. She's smart, really smart; that's not just parental bias speaking, we had a man around to test her and he was astonished. I could not feel more middle-class if I'd just bathed in a vat of hummus. I hope it goes well for her, because we're having to get Eliezer from across the road to babysit. Cora roped me into going to a fancy dress party. Say what you like about the creature in my head, he gives me some cracking costume ideas. Some of his memories are bleeding into mine, and I say things without quite knowing what they mean until after I've said them. Marius from the practice reckons I can write a book. I'd settle for an anti-psychotics prescription myself._

…

_December 4__th__, 1984. I had an appointment with Dr Alderman today. We both spoke to him, me and the demon. I found his name out, too. Lord Voldemort, he calls himself. That can't be real, though, because I'd have heard of a hereditary seat in the Lords with a bloody stupid name like that – Thief of Death, according to The Idiot's Guide to French I had a look through after the appointment – and besides, there's this old man who keeps calling him Tom. He keeps demanding to be let out, you know. Lord Voldemort, that is. Sometimes… sometimes I think about doing it._

…

_November 23__rd__, 1985. I did a very bad thing. There's this awful man on the books, Major Terence Warburton-Bloodnock. He's about ninety years old and seems to survive solely on cheap whisky and racism. On the table he said some things about Cora, the usual for him, hurtful and spiteful and sick. And Lord Voldemort heard, and I, well… I let him out. Some of my memories had bled through into his mind, if he has a mind that isn't mine, and he found out about dentistry. The Major was in for a double root canal and a filling replacement. I was… I was scared. Lord Voldemort grabbed the drill, forced his head back and just rammed it in. Bastard even gave the Major a placebo in place of the local anaesthetic. I heard him scream. Cora chewed me out later on – he might have been a shit but he always paid up – and I thought about telling her that it wasn't me doing that to him but I was scared again. I hope she never finds this._

…

_February 5__th__, 1987. Lord Voldemort can hurt me now. He finds things, bad memories from when I was young, and he hurts me with them. I've started half-inching the painkillers from the practise to shut him up. Dr Alderman thinks it's not a good idea, but it works and it not-working is bad, very bad. He wants a body of his own. He wants control. I can't do that. Not to my girls. Doing that means dying._

(Screen break)

Harry jumped in front of Hermione with a speed that belied his under-nourished body and baggy-looking robes. He spread himself as wide as he could, forming a target in front of his friend with his entire body.

"Take me instead. I'm worth nothing. Don't kill her, please don't kill her-"

"It moves, it breathes, it speaks! Well then. Wish granted. _Fiat Pilum Cernnunensis!_" The half-man thrust his hand out, palm splayed, and a spear tipped with a stylized thunderbolt shot out from his sleeve like a conjuror's dove, aimed straight at the boy's chest. Hermione screamed and yanked him back.

The spell bit through Harry's shoulder in a blaze of searing white and purple light, the colours of a lightning strike, and he went down screaming. There was no blood, mercifully, or perhaps not, depending on how one looks at these things; the electricity from the spell had cauterized the wound, filling Hermione's nostrils with the scent of overcooked gammon and her throat with barely-repressed bile. Harry had a ragged hole through his shoulder that the girl could actually see through and he rolled into a foetal position, clutching at the wound.

"Haha! A fine idea, Miss Granger! I shall take care of him at a leisurely pace, perhaps with some firewhiskey or the Muggle's beloved rhubarb vodka in a glass at my side! So now, when you look into the Mirror, you will retrieve my stone for me or little Harry there dies slowly."

"… I'll do it."

"NO! Hermione, no… please, don't do this, don't give in…"

"I'm sorry…"

Blearily, tearily, she stood in front of the Mirror of Erised and looked deep within. Her parents were there, arm in arm, and so was she, sleek and graceful as always. Her reflection then moved, slipping something into its pocket, something that had never happened before. The real Hermione's eyes widened as the reflection winked cheekily and pulled out her long, tiger-striped wand in one hand and the little bronze cylinder in the other. Hermione nodded, feeling the weight of the something in her inside pocket as her… no, that thing wasn't her dad, it wasn't… tugged her out of her reverie.

"What did you see, little girl?"

(Screen Break)

_June 8__th__, 1987. I think he's winning. After we'd turned off the lights, I felt myself try to take Cora again. She didn't seem to mind but wondered what had brought it on. How can I tell her that it isn't me doing these things?_

…

_November 26__th__, 1987. Little things are changing. How I act around the girls. How I look at them, how I talk to them. I feel… cold. Like he's taking everything away and building himself a new body. I told Dr. Alderman about the nightmares. He thinks they're important, and he wants me to write them down and give them to him. That won't be difficult. I wish it was._

…

_May 4__th__, 1988. There's a new woman at the practice. She's skinny as a rake with these piles of grubby-looking black hair, like if Medusa was a Goth. Ruby, her name is. He took a shine to her… he promised to be good to her if I let him out. And he was. He's a better dentist than I am. Said it would be worth it in the end, he did. That sounds… ominous._

…

_September 19__th__, 1988. Ruby came back, and she and Him started talking. He was a perfect gentleman with her, which is odd, seeing as how he despises Muggles most of the time. Perhaps he's in love? Haha… that's stupid. I don't think the bastard's even capable of it._

…

_March 22__nd__, 1989. We had an inspector over from the union to talk about fair practice, and it would be on one of the days I'd agreed with Him – via Dr. Alderman – that he could run the practice. The union, of course, sends the most arrogant little witch they can find, a Catherine something-or-other, I forget. I mean, it's not like I was there, is it? Anyway, He was giving her the tour and showing her the records and I could feel this… energy in the back of His head. My head. Whatever. It was this great sea of it, all tangled up like boiling spaghetti. And I watched some of it straighten out and the woman just… stopped. Like a clockwork toy that needed winding. He let me back in time for me to watch her die. I called an ambulance anyway, for all the good it did. I have to tell Dr. Alderman this. But I can't tell Cora._

(Screen Break)

"What is it you see!"

"My father… and he gave me something." Harry tried to get up but the not-Ioan conjured some ropes. He went down, bound and gagged and in the middle of a vicious flashback.

"Then give it to me!"

"You don't want to know what it is?"

"I _know_ what it is, you stupid little girl. Now GIVE IT TO ME!"

"OK… I'm sorry, Daddy." Hermione's face was streaked with tears. "I'm so, so sorry."

She spun and raised her wand, hand gripping the little cylinder and pressing. The spell shot out from the big man's hand and the little striped stick leapt into his hand. He laughed over the sound of tearing cloth-

Wait, what?

The little button had released a little blade, a few inches of brass that had been honed to an almost impossible edge by a desperate man. It was a bullet knife, a relic from the Great War. And bullets kill.

There wasn't a great deal of blood. There didn't have to be. The little knife just stayed in the not-Ioan's chest, the occasional spray of crimson spattering the inside of his white Healer's robes. The ropes around Harry dissolved as his captor keeled over, landed on the flagstones with a crack, and was still.

The Boy-Who-Lived sprinted over to his oldest friend and held her in his skinny little arms where she stood. Her breath catching in her throat was the only noise in the silence of the room.

(Screen Break)

_July 31__st__, 1990. Christ. Oh, dear sweet Rassilon, he's got me. And I don't know how to get out. Leaving? Out of the question; Voldemort's too strong now. Even now, he's letting me write one last entry. You see, he dictates the terms now. On his time and his alone does this body work. Understand, it wasn't easy for him. God, but it wasn't easy. Oh, there was a battle. Over my mind of all places – you of all people should know what a lacklustre prize __**that**__ is! Don't worry, there's a contingency plan. But… it's not going to be easy to implement, and it'll hurt everyone involved. You know, Evan – my doctor – reckons that you should read this, but there's a problem. I left you a message in code; all the capital letters in this entry before this entry spell it out. Hermione has the means to deal with Lord Voldemort… I would say I hope she never has to, but we both know she will, and if you're reading this then chances are she already has. It's been the best time a man could have, angel mine. I-_

The last diary slipped from Cora Granger's hands as she screamed and screamed and screamed.

**AN#2: **I did say all would be revealed… I just hope it's to your satisfaction. Well, not so much satisfaction as, well… oh, let's start again. I wanted this chapter to do two things; explain why the Dark Lord chose Ioan, and make you feel. For everyone who has stuck through this… it ain't over. But the first book of Action Girl almost is, and it's been a hell of a ride. Thank you for watching, and I love you all.


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